Rhonda Binda is Co-Founder & COO for Venture Smarter and Executive Director of the Smart Regions Initiative, bringing smart city solutions to communities in the U.S. and around the world. In 2018 Venture Smarter successfully ran the Smart Regions Infrastructure Challenge gathering interest from over 250 governments nationally and helped create the bi-partisan U.S. Congressional Smart Cities Caucus. She previously served as Deputy Director for the U.S. Department of State’s Global Intergovernmental Affairs Division in the Office of the Secretary and in the West Wing of the White House, under the Obama and Clinton administrations respectively. In between her government tours she practiced telecommunications and technology law at Alston & Bird LLP.

Ms. Binda most recently returned to her hometown and served as the Executive Director of the Jamaica, Queens, NY Business Improvement District (BID). Under her tenure, Governor Cuomo awarded Jamaica the #1 award for downtown revitalization, Jamaica was named the #1 hottest neighborhood in NYC by the Wall Street Journal and Streeteasy, and won NYC’s Small Business Services Neighborhood Challenge Grant, among many other awards for the BID.

She was named Business Leader of the Year and is recognized internationally as a people’s choice leader in developing smart cities. Ms. Binda graduated from Duke University and Georgetown Law and is an Oxford University Lord Rothermere Scholar. She serves on the boards of the New York Hall of Science, Boys & Girls Club of Metro Queens, Guyanese Girls Rock Foundation, and is on the National Council for AIPAC. Ms. Binda currently teaches as an Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at The City University of New York – Medgar Evers College.