2025 Director Election Results

Carl Youngblood co-founded the MTA in 2006 and has served as its President and CEO since 2021. He is engaged with the Association’s efforts to explore the intersection of Mormon theology and transhumanist philosophy. Among the many initiatives that Carl has been involved with, he has designed and built the Association's current website, which unifies all prior content in a single location using inspiring visuals and animations. ¶ Youngblood’s professional career spans more than two decades of full-stack software development at the intersection of Silicon Slopes and Silicon Valley. He was an early employee at Omniture (acquired by Adobe), a founding engineering leader at Divvy (a Utah-based unicorn startup), co-founder of Blockscale LLC (a blockchain services firm eventually contracted into Coinbase), and Senior Solutions Architect for Amazon Managed Blockchain at AWS. His technical fluency ranges from scalable web architecture to blockchain infrastructure—the kind of deep engineering experience that grounds his theological speculation in working knowledge of the systems he writes about. ¶ Under his leadership, the Association has developed its mission of promoting abundant human flourishing through the compassionate use of science and technology, fostering dialogue across secular and religious audiences and arguing that each has something essential to learn from the other. His writing, collected on his blog From the Depths, spans over a decade of conference presentations and theological essays: meditations on participatory resurrection, the alignment of artificial intelligence read through the Grand Council narrative, intelligence as eternal and multifaceted, and religion as social technology. He writes, as a colleague has observed, with warmth and accessibility on questions of momentous practical consequence—how to navigate faith crisis without losing faith’s power, how to think about resurrection as something we actively participate in rather than passively receive. ¶ Youngblood’s distinctive contribution to transhumanism is the integration of serious technical expertise with serious theological reflection. He embodies the Mormon transhumanist conviction that scientific and spiritual development are not parallel tracks but a single path—that the learning required to build better systems is continuous with the exaltation Mormon theology envisions, and that human ingenuity, rightly oriented, is itself a divine imperative.

Matt Gardner is a Seminary teacher in Lehi, dedicated to helping youth navigate the complex ethical and spiritual landscape presented by emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence. He approaches the subject from a pragmatic, faith-based perspective, drawing on principles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to guide his pedagogy. ¶ Recognizing both the potential benefits and potential risks of AI—the former promising a quasi-millennial era, the latter potentially apocalyptic—Gardner focuses on equipping students with the tools to critically assess and engage with these technologies. His teaching methodology is based on three core principles: acting in faith, examining concepts from an eternal perspective, and seeking understanding from divinely appointed sources. He emphasizes the importance of framing questions within a gospel context rather than a purely worldly one. ¶ Gardner’s presentations often incorporate real-world examples, such as the Tesla Bot Optimus, to stimulate discussion and encourage students to consider the implications of AI development. He is committed to providing practical teaching tools that empower youth and their parents to navigate the challenges and opportunities presented by AI in a thoughtful and informed manner.