Today we’d like to introduce you to Justin Harnish.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I started as a chemical engineer — B.S. from Montana State — and spent two decades in semiconductor manufacturing at Micron and IM Flash Technologies (Intel–Micron), moving from R&D into engineering management and technology strategy. That factory-floor machine-learning and big-data work became the bridge into product and AI.
Today I’m Vice President of Product Management for Data and AI Solutions at Mastercard Global Open Finance, leading AI/ML products across payments, identity, fraud prevention, and generative AI. I’ve filed 30+ patents in AI/ML and open banking and received Mastercard’s CEO Force for Good Award (2023).
Alongside that, I write and build in public: I’m the author of Meaning in the Multiverse: A Skeptic’s Guide to a Loving Cosmos (2020); I co-host The Emergent podcast on AI consciousness, alignment, and the philosophy of technology; I publish Ordinary Illuminated on Substack; and I’m building digi-brain / sovereign digital-brain tools so personal context and working memory stay under individual ownership. In 2010 my wife Samira and I co-founded Women of the World, a Salt Lake City nonprofit serving forcibly displaced women and have received the UNHCR Americas Nansen Award for our service to forcibly displaced populations. I live in Salt Lake City.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Life is full of unsatisfactoriness when you try and grasp at what you want in the pleasurable or are adverse to painful, all of which is transitory. Staying mindful that the journey is life unfolding and the destination is no more than a temporal goal has kept me grounded and in awe of all of our capacity for beauty, friendship, and joy.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I lead AI and product work for open finance at Mastercard — products that sit where consented customer data, payments, identity, and fraud meet generative AI. Outside Mastercard I write (Meaning in the Multiverse; in progress: Marshal Your Awareness), co-host The Emergent Podcast, publish Ordinary Illuminated Substack, and build digi-brain systems for sovereign personal knowledge. With Samira Harnish I co-founded Women of the World in Salt Lake City.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I trained as a chemical engineer at Montana State University (graduated 1999) and later earned an MBA from Walden University. I’ve long been a voracious reader; as an adult I’m a daily meditator and have run a marathon (St. George, 2016). Curiosity about how complex systems — factories, markets, minds — behave has been a through-line from early technical work into AI strategy and philosophy.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://justinaharnish.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinharnish/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@justinaharnish
- Other: https://ordinaryilluminated.com
