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title: Paul Payne
date: 2025-07-06
---

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Paul Payne is the director of the Civil Society Technology Foundation. Paul brings a nearly 35-year long career in technology, innovation, and startups to focus on building systems that empower civil society and promote open technologies.

## Microsoft

Paul is a Principal Research Engineer at Microsoft in the Office of the CTO. His current work involves building AI systems by augmenting generative models with systems and cognitive architectures. His team explores what can be done with LLMs to unlock their utility for a larger range of applications and spends time building functional prototypes and sharing learnings across Microsoft, academia, and the wider industry.

His work makes its way into products like Semantic Kernel, Microsoft Teams, and Bing, and is used by research teams around the world.

## Artificial Intelligence

Paul has pursued interests in autonomous agents and multi-agent systems in undergraduate studies (BSME) at the University of Nebraska in Mechanical Engineering with emphasis on robotics and control, in graduate work (MSCS) at the University of Washington, through numerous startups, and in his work at Microsoft.

He strongly believes AI will effect nearly every aspect of society in the upcoming decades and it is important now to be engaged in ensuring that the benefits of AI are positive and broadly distributed.

Paul founded the [Seattle AI Society](https://seattleaisociety.org) in 2023 where, in addition to professional networking and creative project collaborations, we held weekly discussions on AI’s impact on society from various perspectives.

In late 2023, Paul published a series of articles investigating topics of machine thinking in a newsletter named "[Investigations in Mind](https://payne.io/posts/investigations-in-mind/)".

## Innovation

Paul has a long history of working in innovation labs, including Microsoft Research, Microsoft Area51, Xinova, Ivy Softworks, and the Nordstrom Innovation Lab.

Through these engagements, Paul developed expertise in numerous innovation methodologies including Microsoft’s Central Incubation Framework, Jobs to be Done/Outcome Driven Innovation, Design Thinking, Lean Software Development, the Toyota Production System, Agile, Customer Development, Disruptive Innovation.

## Startups

Paul has been an early or founding member of multiple startups including [Atlas Informatics](https://www.geekwire.com/2017/atlas-informatics-shut-pulling-plug-encrypted-personal-search-engine/) (Director of Platform and Infrastructure), Fiero (CTO), and [Navigating Cancer](https://www.navigatingcancer.com) (Lead UX).

In 2002, Paul founded MinistryHome, a website builder (like Wix or SquareSpace) integrated with donation, newsletter, and other tools for small non-profits. In 2006 Paul transformed MinistryHome into a social network leading to its acquisition in 2007.

## Personal

Paul is a deeply proud father of two incredible people and relies on their ongoing experiences of the world to motivate much of his ongoing desire to make it a better place for the next generation.

## Contact

- [Paul on the CSTF community forum](https://forum.civilsociety.dev/u/payneio/summary)
- [Paul's LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/payneio/)
- Phone: (206) 790-6707
