Amar Bakshi is an artist and entrepreneur-in-residence at MIT's Center for Constructive Communication. He is the founder of Shared_Studios, a social impact company that connects strangers across distance and difference through curated conversations in life-size video environments called Portals. Since 2014, Portals have connected more than half a million people in intimate conversations across one hundred sites in thirty countries. Portals have been placed from refugee sites to public parks in, working in partnership with major institutions including the United Nations, the Smithsonian, and Google. Portals have been covered by scores of major media outlets and PBS created a documentary on the initiative. Portals have also hosted world leaders including Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Malala Yousafzai.While running Shared_Studios, Amar helped launch a groundbreaking study on policing in America with researchers at Yale University and Johns Hopkins called the Portals Policing Project. The study amassed the most extensive collection of first-hand accounts of policing to date — over 850 conversations across 14 neighborhoods in six cities.Amar is also the founder of Whose Metaverse, a nonprofit that builds digital equity by making creator tools accessible to everyone through emerging tech garages and an immersive learning platform.As an artist, Amar has exhibited his work at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Center for Digital Culture, among others. He created The Legal Medium symposium, which brings together leading artists and academics to explore how artists use law as material.Earlier in his career, Amar reported across a dozen countries over two years as a reporter for The Washington Post and traveled across America reporting on the 2008 election. He also was the Managing Editor of CNN.com’s global analysis website, where he launched an online show bringing together diverse global voices. Amar also worked at the State Department as Special Assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.Amar holds an AB from Harvard University, a masters in international economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a JD from Yale Law School. He is a Truman Fellow and a Soros Scholar and lives in Brooklyn.