About me
Dr. Nicol Turner-Lee is a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a global think tank located in Washington, DC. She works in the Center for Technology Innovation where she researches public policy designed to enable equitable access to technology across the U.S. and to harness its power to create change in communities across the world. Dr. Turner-Lee’s research also explores global and domestic broadband deployment and internet governance issues. She is an expert on the intersection of race, wealth, and technology within the context of civic engagement, criminal justice, and economic development.
Prior to her role at the Brookings Institution, Turner-Lee served as vice president and chief research and policy officer at Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC), a national non-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting and preserving equal opportunity and civil rights in the mass media, telecommunications, and broadband industries, In this role, she led the design and implementation of their research, policy and advocacy agendas.
Dr. Turner Lee’s most recent publications address biases in machine learning algorithms, including a co-authored publication on identifying and mitigating online biases. She also has written extensively on the digital divide in both urban and rural areas, and the availability of local health resources, including those enabled through digital. She has a forthcoming book, Digitally Invisible: How the Internet is Creating the New Underclass (Brookings Press, 2020).