President of the Markle Foundation

Program:
Aspen Homeland Security Group

Biography

Zoë Baird Budinger is the President of the Markle Foundation, a private philanthropy that focuses on using information and communications technologies to address critical public needs, particularly in the areas of health care and national security. She also co-chairs the Markle Task Force on National Security in the Information Age and participates in the Steering Group of Markle Connecting for Health.

Ms. Baird Budinger's career spans business, government, and academia. She has been Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Aetna, Inc., a Senior Visiting Scholar at Yale Law School, Counselor and staff Executive at General Electric, and a Partner in the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers. She was Associate General Counsel to President Jimmy Carter and an attorney in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice. She served on President Clinton's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1993–2001, on the Secretary of Defense’s Privacy Advisory Committee from 2003–2004, and on the Attorney General’s International Competition Policy Advisory Committee from 1997–2000.

She holds a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt School of Law, and an undergraduate degree from Berkeley with majors in communications and public policy, and in political science.

Ms. Baird Budinger serves on a number of nonprofit and corporate boards including the Brookings Institution, the Chubb Corporation, and Boston Properties. She is married to Bill Budinger. She is a member of the Aspen Homeland Security Group.