Zoe is Co-Founder & Deputy Executive Director of the Tech Policy Design Institute (TPDi), Australia’s new independent non-partisan think tank dedicated to technology policy. With support from government and industry, TPDi’s mission is to shape technology for the benefit of humanity through research, education, commentary, and community building.
Zoe collaborates with the Oxford Internet Institute’s Professor Vili Lehdonvirta and Boxi Wu as part of the Digital Economic Security Lab (DIESL). Lehdonvirta, Wu and Hawkins research the political geography of AI and cloud digital infrastructure, including for the OECD. Their work has been featured in TIME Magazine, The Economist, and POLITICO.
Zoe has led internationally significant tech policy initiatives from government, big tech, academic, and think tank perspectives. Zoe worked for the Australian government across communications, innovation, and foreign policy portfolios, as a ministerial adviser and in the public service. As Adviser to Australia’s Minister for Communications, Zoe oversaw the development of the Online Safety Act 2021. As a member of Amazon’s International Public Policy Team, Zoe drove whole of amazon digital policy initiatives and represented the company in international organisations. Zoe began her career as an Analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Zoe is passionate about helping bring the next generation of women up behind her by role modelling confident female leadership and actively mentoring young women across international relations and responsible tech policy in Australia and around the world.
Digital democracies; content moderation; foreign policy; international security
This project aims to map where in the world the data centers that make up the computational infrastructure of AI research are located and who owns them. It will also investigate government policies aimed at shaping this geography.
New York Times, 21 June 2025
As countries race to power artificial intelligence, a yawning gap is opening around the world, with commentary from Prof Vili Lehdonvirta.
Forbes, 17 April 2025
Article highlights how Cloud computing has changed the status of network hardware like servers and data storage from a common asset of organizations or companies to a type of infrastructure, referencing OII research.
