Neira Budiono
Neira Budiono is a researcher and consultant working at the intersection of adolescent wellbeing, online safety, and responsible technology. She is a PhD student in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford, where she researches conversational AI for adolescent mental health and teaches on adolescent wellbeing in the digital age.
Her work bridges global health, children’s rights, and the technology industry. Having worked with UN agencies, funders, civil society organizations, and technology platforms including Google, TikTok, and Snap, she brings experience connecting sectors that often operate in silos. She is passionate about building knowledge infrastructure that is not only published but put into practice, and is particularly interested in how to protect adolescents online while respecting their agency and right to accurate health information.
Neira’s expertise spans landscape analyses and evidence reviews, qualitative and participatory research, grantmaking, and the design and facilitation of communities of practice. At Safe Online, she manages a $3 million grantmaking portfolio across 14 countries and leads a community of practice that connects grantees with technology platforms. At UNICEF, she launched the global Adolescent Mental Health Hub, which reached users in 168 countries in its first year. She also co-founded Tabu.id, a youth-led digital sexuality and mental health platform that reaches millions of young people across Indonesia annually, and now supports its next generation of Indonesian leaders.
Neira holds an MSc in International Health and Tropical Medicine from the University of Oxford and a degree in psychology from Universitas Indonesia. She is fluent in English and Indonesian.