Meet the Founder: Suvianna Grecu and the Story Behind AI for Change 

Suvianna Grecu has always been drawn to possibility.

With a background in law and entrepreneurship, she is interested in new ideas, ambitious visions and finding ways to make things work better. When the excitement around artificial intelligence gathered pace in 2023, she was swept up in it too.

For a while, she describes herself as living inside the “AI bubble”, focused mainly on what the technology could make possible. But as evidence of harm and unintended consequences became harder to ignore, her perspective began to shift.

“I did not want to replace enthusiasm with fear,” she says. “Neither extreme seemed useful.”

She wanted to understand the opportunities and the risks together. 

That desire became the cornerstone for AI for Change: a non-profit foundation built to make room for a conversation she felt was missing. There was no single dramatic moment when Grecu decided to establish the foundation. Instead, there was a growing frustration with a public debate that seemed to offer only two positions. AI was either the answer to almost everything or something fundamentally threatening. Neither reflected the complexity she saw.

“We needed an organization that could approach AI with ambition but without naivety, and with caution but without paralysis.”

Eventually, that observation became a personal challenge.

“If I believe this space should exist, why am I waiting for someone else to create it?”

It is a question that reveals something of the entrepreneur behind the foundation. Recognising a need was one thing, deciding to take responsibility for it was the next. 

At the heart of Grecu’s work is a value she names without hesitation: freedom.

“AI should expand people’s ability to make meaningful choices, not narrow it.”

For her, that reaches well beyond the convenience of a faster service or a more efficient working day. It includes privacy, democratic participation and the ability to live without being constantly monitored, predicted or manipulated. The question is how much control people retain over their own lives as AI becomes part of them.

When weighing a decision, she returns to a straightforward test: does this use of technology give people more genuine freedom, or does it make important choices on their behalf?

“I want us to build a future in which AI gives people more room to choose how they live, work and participate in life, not less.”

Building the foundation has also challenged her own assumptions about what responsible AI requires. Initially, she saw it primarily as a matter of expertise, regulation and technical safeguards. She still considers all three essential. But working with people from different professional and personal backgrounds has made their limitations clearer.

Rules and technical protections depend on whose experiences inform them. Who gets to define the problem? Who is listened to? And who has a meaningful voice before a decision is made?

“Responsible AI is also about power, culture and participation,” Grecu says.

That understanding has broadened her approach. People affected by AI need a role in shaping its direction, and responsibility cannot remain a discussion confined to a small circle of experts. For someone who began by looking at what the technology could do, the work has increasingly become about who gets to decide.

Away from the AI questions, Suvianna has a particularly effective reminder to pay attention to the present: her adopted cat, Bebu, also known as Bebutzu. His method is uncomplicated. He flops down at her feet and demands that she play with him.

“He has an effective way of interrupting me,” she says.

Suvianna also makes a deliberate effort to protect her routines. Once a week, she schedules a walk in nature, leaves her headphones behind and puts her phone away.

“I try not to solve anything or generate new ideas,” she says. “It is a chance to be fully present.”

For someone naturally drawn to what might come next, there is something revealing in that weekly commitment: time set aside simply to experience the world as it is.

Connect with Suvianna in LinkedIn to learn more about her way of thinking.