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James Felton Keith (JFK) is an engineer, labor economist, author, and recipient of the 56th NAACP Labor Award. He is the Founder of InclusionScore and Chair of the Workforce Service Management Institute, the first international certifying body for the Standards like DEI (ISO 30415), HR (ISO 30201) and Artificial Intelligence Management System (ISO 4200). His research focuses on the economics of data, information ownership, artificial intelligence, and the future of work, culminating in 13 books, most recently Data Is Labor (2024) and Your Data, Their Wealth: The Price of Human Input to the AI Economy (2026). In 2017, he became the first openly Black LGBTQ candidate to seek federal office in the United States by running for Harlem’s Congressional District.
A specialist in the ethnography of technology—the study of how culture and technology shape one another—Keith argues that artificial intelligence has exposed a fundamental blind spot in modern economics: the failure to recognize human informational contributions as a factor of production. He is known for his belief that solving society's most complex challenges requires "the mind of a CEO and the heart of a social worker," combining engineering, economics, public policy, and human rights into a single body of work.
Keith is the architect of the Data Union, a framework that positions individuals as rightful stakeholders in the value generated from their digital contributions. He is also the founder of Inclusionism, a philosophical framework that examines how societies create, recognize, attribute, and distribute value through agency, ownership, legitimacy, and belonging. Together, these ideas form the intellectual foundation for his work on Workforce Service Management, digital governance, and the future of artificial intelligence.
His scholarship has contributed to international conversations on privacy, labor rights, responsible AI, and data governance across North America and Europe. He has authored and edited fifteen books, including the Anthem Press series The Ethics of Personal Data Collection in International Relations. In 2025, MyData Global honored Data Is Labor with its Thought Leader Award for advancing new thinking on personal data and the digital economy.
Long before artificial intelligence became his primary focus, Keith built a career as a civic entrepreneur and human rights organizer. He helped establish one of the nation's earliest LGBTQ+ Chambers of Commerce, organized Pride Nights across the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL, and later founded the Basic Income March, the Juneteenth March in Central Park, the Harlem LGBT Center, and numerous organizations dedicated to economic inclusion, civic participation, and community development. Across each of these efforts, his work has consistently explored how institutions can expand opportunity, strengthen democratic participation, and build more inclusive economies.
Today, Keith's work spans scholarship, standards development, entrepreneurship, and public policy. Through InclusionScore, the Workforce Service Management Institute, the Keith Institute, and the Inclusionism project, he is developing a unified framework for understanding how societies measure human contribution, govern artificial intelligence, and distribute value in the twenty-first century. His work asks a simple but increasingly urgent question: If intelligence is built collectively, who should own the value it creates?
