Rhonda Binda, Co-Founder at Venture Smarter

Rhonda Binda is Co-Founder & VP Policy for Venture Smarter and Executive Director of the Regional Smart Cities Initiative, bringing smart city solutions to communities in the U.S. and around the world. Ms. Binda has a distinguished history of public service, as Deputy Director for the U.S. Department of State’s Global Intergovernmental Affairs Division in the Office of the Secretary and in the West Wing of the White House, under the Obama and Clinton administrations respectively. In between her government tours she practiced telecommunications and technology law as with Alston & Bird LLP. 

Ms. Binda most recently returned to her hometown and served as the Executive Director of the Jamaica, Queens, NY Business Improvement District (BID). Under her tenure, Governor Cuomo awarded Jamaica the #1 award state-wide for downtown revitalization, Jamaica was named the #1 hottest neighborhood in NYC for real estate by the Wall Street Journal and competed for and won NYC’s Small Business Services Neighborhood Challenge Grant, among many other grants and awards for the first time for the Jamaica BID.

She was named Queens Chamber of Commerce’s Business Leader of the Year, honored by the Caribbean Business Connection, Women of International Mission, Queens Tribune during Caribbean History Month and named Community Leader of the Year by Queens County Young Democrats. She serves on the boards of Positive Women United, Guyanese Girls Rock Foundation, the Boys and Girls Club of Metro Queens and is Vice Chair of the NY Guyana Celebration Committee. She has worked on advocacy and political campaigns on the local, state and presidential levels. Ms. Binda graduated from Duke University and Georgetown Law and is an Oxford University Lord Rothermere Scholar. She is an adjunct professor at Medgar Evers College at The City University of New York and is from and lives in New York.