Our team is made up of web geeks, city experts, and technology industry leaders.

Staff

Jennifer Pahlka is the founder and executive director of Code for America, which works with talented web professionals and cities around the country to promote public service and reboot government. Government Technology named her one of 2011’s Doers, Dreamers and Drivers in Public Sector Innovation and the Huffington Post named her the top Game Changer in Business and Technology the same year. She is known for her TED talk, Coding a Better Government, and is a frequent speaker at a wide range of events. She spent eight years at CMP Media where she ran the Game Developers Conference, Game Developer magazine, Gamasutra.com and the Independent Games Festival. Previously, she ran the Web 2.0 and Gov 2.0 events for TechWeb, in conjunction with O’Reilly Media, and co-chaired the successful Web 2.0 Expo. Jennifer’s early career was spent in the non-profit sector. She is a graduate of Yale University and lives in Oakland, Calif. with her daughter and eight chickens.

Abhi Nemani (Director of Strategy and Communications) has worked closely with technology firms, political organizations, and local governments, focusing on leveraging technology to grow their impact. At the Rose Institute of State and Local Government, he led a 30-person research team to increase transparency and efficiency in governance using technology, and at various political organizations, including the Center for American Progress and Young Democrats of America, he has organized national outreach and mobilization campaigns. At Google, he pioneered an innovative strategy to leverage social media. As a designer, editor, and developer, Abhi has extensive experience creating popular and award-winning websites, magazines, graphics, and publications. He graduated magna cum laude from Claremont McKenna College with a honors degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE). Contact: abhi[@]codeforamerica.org | 909-206-2220

Meghan Reilly (Operations Director) joined Code for America in August, 2010. After graduating from the University of Colorado she moved out West to join The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco team. She participated in their rigorous training program and spent four years learning the hospitality industry. She then moved into the technology arena, working on major technology events such as COMDEX, Interop, Web 2.0 Summit, Web 2.0 Expo and more. Her roles on these events evolved; when she left the corporate world in August she was Associate GM & Operations Director on the Web 2.0 and Gov 2.0 events, co-produced by UBM TechWeb and O’Reilly Media.

Mark Headd (Director of Government Relations) joined Code for America in April of 2012. He has extensive experience with public sector technology issues, having served for three years as the chief policy and budget advisor for the State of Delaware’s Department of Technology and Information. He has also served as Director of the Delaware Government Information Center, as Technology Adviser to former Delaware Governor Thomas R. Carper, and in the New York State Senate as a budget and finance analyst. A civic hacking veteran, Mark is self-taught in multiple programming languages, holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, and is a former adjunct instructor at the University of Delaware teaching a course in electronic government.

David Eaves (Director of Training) is a public policy entrepreneur, open government activist and negotiation expert. David is retained by several governments to advise on open government and open data, works with two spin-offs of the Harvard Negotiation Project and advises businesses on open source strategies and community management. David advises the Mayor of Vancouver and helped author the city’s Open Motion, is on the advisory board of Civic Commons, served on the international referenced group of the Australian Gov2.0 commission and was the ENGO negotiation consultant on the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement. In addition to his work he is a frequent speaker and author on these and other subjects.

Lauren Reid (Marketing Coordinator) is a ardent servant of democracy-in-action whether it be on strike lines or online. She hosts a solid background in non-profit communications and has worked on various local and national campaigns blending new and traditional mediums. Lauren spent the past several years amplifying the voice of registered nurses as a member of the California Nurses Association communications team. Before that, Lauren served in the art department of San Francisco magazine and facilitated communications at ACLU of Northern California. Lauren, often found Canon in-hand, is a self-proclaimed documentarian of democracy. She holds degrees in Visual Communication/Photojournalism and English from the University of Miami. Contact: lr[@]codeforamerica.org | 415-625-9639

Sheila Bapat (Donor Relations Manager) has woven civic engagement and women’s political equality into her life and career ever since she served as a Kids Voting USA representative at the age of 15. More recently, she worked to launch The 2012 Project, a nonpartisan national campaign to encourage women in technology, science, and related fields to pursue public service. An attorney by training, Sheila practiced employment litigation briefly in San Francisco before entering the nonprofit sector. During law school at the University of Pennsylvania, Sheila served as president of the national board of Law Students for Reproductive Justice. She currently serves on the board of ACCESS Women’s Health Justice, an Oakland-based nonprofit that connects underserved women to reproductive health providers. sheila[@]codeforamerica.org @sheilabapat on twitter

Jack Madans (Program Coordinator) cut his teeth as a community organizer early on when he founded the pilot project, FoodCycle, while studying at the London School of Economics. Under Jack’s leadership FoodCycle served 200 three-course meals a week at the cost of 50 cents per meal, and has grown to now serving 3,000 meals. While interning at the White House, Jack assisted with policy production in the the Office of Urban Affairs and outreach to the nation’s Mayors in the office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Jack founded the Digital Citizens Project, a group of techno-progressives that build tools, share concepts, and aggregate individuals to collectively use technology in the public interest. Jack earned a degree in Political Science from UC Berkeley where he was President of the Roosevelt Institute’s local chapter.

Bob Sofman (Program Director: Fellowship) has had a diverse career – from counseling adolescents early in his career to holding executive positions in both large companies and startups. During the 10 years Bob spent at ATT, he held a variety of positions, including running ATT’s International Inbound business. From ATT, Bob helped launch PacBell’s Long Distance business and from there joined his first startup AVIRNEX in a CMO role. After a successful acquisition, Bob joined PointCast where he helped direct the sale of the company and then spent 7 years as an SVP at Charles Schwab where he launched Schwab’s wireless business and led the eBusiness Group. He holds a BS in Psychology and two Masters Degrees (Counseling and Computer Science), as well as being certified in change and culture management. Bob is a single father of a 6 year-old son, lives in San Francisco, and sits on several non-profit and advisory boards.

Ryan Resella, MPA (Technical Lead) began working in local government in 2005 at the City of Santa Clarita in Southern California. As a Senior IT Analyst at Santa Clarita he was responsible for managing the Application Development group in the Technology Services Division. Previously, he was the project manager and lead engineer on eGraffiti which is a web based graffiti tracking and prevention application, which won the League of California Cities Grand Prize Helen Putnam Award. He also has done extensive work with GIS using Esri products. Ryan was part of the 2011 Inaugural class of Code for America Fellows. As a photographer, Ryan continues to capture great moments at Code for America. He holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration and Bachelors of Science in Computer Science from California State University, Northridge.

Ron Bouganim (Program Director: Accelerator) is a serial entrepreneur in the telecommunications and consumer Internet sectors, having co-founded or been a member of the senior management of startups including CCI (sold to British Telecom), Trymedia (sold to Macrovision), Razz and branchnext. Ron has a deep understanding of how to develop ideas that start on a blank page into organizations that have far reaching scale. Ron has raised over $300 Million in venture capital and vendor financing and been engaged in 7 M&A transactions. Ron has also been actively involved with a number of nonprofits as a donor, adviser and board member including Kiva, Foundation For Defense Of Democracies, Full Circle Fund, Endeavor, ZSpace, Take Stock In Children and the Children’s Foundation For Creative Technology.

Michael Santus (Office Manager) joined Code for America in December, 2011. Originally from Philadelphia, Penn. he moved west in 1995. After gaining extensive skills and experience in the financial planning industry, he has spent the past 5+ years as the Sales Operations Manager for a local Bay Area classic and exotic car dealer. He is a Mercedes Benz lover and an avid traveler whose motto is “Have luggage will travel.”

Board of Directors

Andrew McLaughlin is the Executive Director of Civic Commons. He is also currently a non-resident fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, teaching a course on free speech around the world. He was, until recently, Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States, responsible for advising the President on Internet, technology, and innovation policies, including open government, cybersecurity, online privacy, freedom of expression, radio spectrum, research and development priorities, entrepreneurship, and open technology platforms in health care, energy, and education. From November 2008-January 2009, Andrew served as a member of the Obama/Biden presidential transition team in Washington. From 2004-2009, he was Director of Global Public Policy for Google. From 1998-2005, he was a Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. From 1999-2002, Andrew worked to launch and manage the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), serving as Vice President, Chief Policy Officer, and Chief Financial Officer. In 2002-2003, Andrew taught at Harvard Law while working on Internet infrastructure and policy reform projects in a number of developing countries, including Ghana, Mongolia, Kenya, Afghanistan, and South Africa.

Leonard Lin is a technologist specializing in the social web and a happy dilettante in hardware hacking, data visualization, participatory politics and other such geekery. He co-founded Upcoming.org (acquired by Yahoo! in 2005), and subsequently ran Yahoo!’s Hack Day program. Most recently, he worked on web technology and social software for the Obama campaign. Prolific and highly parallel, he’s written code for Lawrence Lessig, WordPress, Metafilter, Downhill Battle, and deployed mobile location and sensor network applications for the Web 2.0 Expo and Where 2.0 conferences. Leonard helped co-found Code for America along with Jennifer Pahlka, laying the groundwork for the program, and continues to serve as a technical advisor.

John Lilly is a partner at Greylock Partners with a focus on consumer Internet and enterprise software. Prior to Greylock, John was CEO of Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox, an open source Web browser used by more than 400 million people. John also co-founded Reactivity, an enterprise security infrastructure company acquired by Cisco in 2007, where he served as founding CEO and later CTO. John is currently on the Board of Directors of the Mozilla Corporation and the Participatory Culture Foundation, and has previously served on the boards of directors of TripIt (acquired by Concur in 2011), CenterRun (acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2003), and Reactivity (acquired by Cisco Systems in 2007). He is a co-inventor on 7 United States patents.

Andrew Greenhill is the Mayor’s Chief of Staff for the City of Tucson. He has worked extensively on wide-ranging issues facing Tucson and Southern Arizona such as water, transportation, environmental sustainability, urban planning, economic development and local government reform. Andrew’s strong interest in Government 2.0‚ the use of technology to improve government and serve citizens, has led to the development of a number of technology initiatives both inside and outside city government. In addition to serving on the Board of Directors for Code for America, Andrew recently co-founded OpenTucson, a local non-profit where civic-minded web developers work closely with community leaders to develop applications and other technological solutions and improve Tucson’s quality of life.

Board Emeritus

Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. In addition to Foo Camps (Friends of O’Reilly Camps, which gave rise to the un-conference movement), O’Reilly Media also hosts conferences on technology topics, including the Web 2.0 Summit, the Web 2.0 Expo, the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, the Gov 2.0 Summit, and the Gov 2.0 Expo. Tim’s blog, the O’Reilly Radar, watches the alpha geeks, to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim’s long-term vision for his company is to change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.

Project Mentors

Ron Bouganim is a serial entrepreneur in the telecommunications and consumer Internet sectors, having co-founded or been a member of the senior management of startups including CCI (sold to British Telecom), Trymedia (sold to Macrovision), Razz and branchnext. Ron has a deep understanding of how to develop ideas that start on a blank page into organizations that have far reaching scale. Ron has raised over $300 Million in venture capital and vendor financing and been engaged in 7 M&A transactions. Ron has also been actively involved with a number of nonprofits as a donor, adviser and board member including Kiva, Foundation For Defense Of Democracies, Full Circle Fund, Endeavor, ZSpace, Take Stock In Children and the Children’s Foundation For Creative Technology.

Wendy Owen helps companies and organizations achieve their goals through sound research methodologies, user-centered design solutions, and effective product development facilitation. She has 15 years of experience leading teams to create successful digital products, working with companies such as Yamaha, Wells Fargo, TED, Corning, and Sun. As VP of Customer Experience, she built product teams and led interface development and user research for acclaimed startups GetSatisfaction and Guru.com. She also founded and ran Giant Ant Design, a San Francisco based design studio focused on product strategy and customer research. With a unique perspective that fuses interface design with data-driven product design, Wendy is passionate about creating products that people love to use.

Board of Advisors

Deb Bryant is Public Sector Communities Manager at Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab (OSL), where she advocates and creates collaboration between public, private and academic concerns in pursuit of the successful adoption of open source technology and models. She leads OSL’s production of the annual Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON). Deborah’s interest in open source and its implication for government is reflected in her civic involvement; she serves as a Board Director for DemocracyLab.org; on the Board of Advisors for the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation; on the Oregon Statewide Distance Learning Advisory Council.

Kevin Curry is Chief Scientist and a Co-founder at Bridgeborn, Inc. He is responsible for Bridgeborn’s internal research and development leading to the creation and introduction of new technologies, approaches and methodologies. Kevin is also the Product Director and lead designer of the Bridgeworks data visualization platform. He works closely with clients to establish their strategic objectives using distributed information systems and personal tools, enabling analysis and rich communication in various operational settings. In addition, Kevin is the creator of CityCamp, an international unconference and online community dedicated to innovation for municipal governments and community organizations.

Clay Johnson is an open government advocate. He is the former director of Sunlight Labs at the Sunlight Foundation where he led the organization’s plunge into Open Source. He developed Sunlight’s contest model into Apps for America and Design for America and under his leadership, Sunlight Labs became a community of 2000 developers and designers working to open their government. He was one of Federal computing Week’s Fed 100 in 2010. Prior to Sunlight, Clay was one of the four founders of Blue State Digital, the organization that provided the technology and online strategy behind Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Jascha Franklin-Hodge is a Founding Partner and Chief Technology Officer of Blue State Digital. Mr. Franklin-Hodge has more than a decade’s experience in software development in the corporate, nonprofit, and political spheres. He manages Blue State’s technology staff and operations out of BSD’s technology center near downtown Boston, including Blue State’s infrastructure, the maintenance and enhancement of the BSD Online Tools, and it’s technology client services. For Gov. Howard Dean’s groundbreaking 2004 presidential campaign, he led the technology team responsible for scaling, securing, and maintaining a high-visibility, high-traffic Web site, which received praise from both the political and tech communities for its usability, reliability, and depth of functionality. He studied computer science at MIT.

Adam Greenfield is the author of Speedbird and the founder and managing director of Urbanscale. Over the last decade, he has written and consulted on issues at the intersection of design, technology and culture, with an increasing focus on how these things interact in (and condition our experience of) cities. He is the author of Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing. With his wife, Nurri Kim, he co-founded undisciplinary design collective, Do projects, which publishes books, pamphlets, and editions, and otherwise underwrites explorations into space and experience. Previously, he was the head of design direction for service and user-interface design at Nokia.

Peter Corbett is the founder and CEO of iStrategyLabs‚ an interactive agency that develops creative solutions to clients’ challenges and brings them to life in the digital and physical world. He’s widely known for his creative marketing approaches coupled with a deep technical background, and a focus on civic innovation through community building. In Government 2.0 circles, Peter is widely known for co-creating Apps for Democracy with Vivek Kundra and DC’s Office of the CTO, as well his co-founding of Government 2.0 Club, Government 2.0 Camp, and Transparency Camp.

Michal Migurski is a partner at Stamen where he architects the technical aspects of Stamen’s work, moving comfortably from active participation in Stamen’s design process, designing database schemas and API’s, to creating the dynamic applications that Stamen delivers to clients. Michal has been building for the web since 1995, specializing in data design and publishing for a diverse range of clients and numerous public, technical research projects and active open source codebases. He’s a Polish National and holds a degree in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley. He maintains an active weblog at mike.teczno.com, and likes to talk in front of groups.

Ben Cerveny is a strategic and conceptual advisor to Stamen, helping to articulate an approach toward creative visualization and to evaluate and develop potential partners and engagements relative to that vision. Ben is a highly regarded experience designer and conceptual strategist, guiding the creative direction and vision of multiple successful endeavors, both public and private. His clients include Nokia, Sony, and Philips, as well as the Cities of Amsterdam and Barcelona. Previously, he was founder of the Experience Design Lab at frogdesign, an international product design company, and a lead designer and platform development strategist at Ludicorp, makers of Flickr.

Nick Grossman is the Director of Civic Works at OpenPlans, a social enterprise building open civic technologies. At OpenPlans, Nick oversees the development of open source software projects for government agencies, with a focus on sustainable transportation and local civic engagement. Previously, Nick worked as a dot-com startupper, independent web designer and developer, and urban design consultant. He holds a degree in Urban Studies from Stanford University.

Andrew Rasiej is the Founder of Personal Democracy Forum, an annual conference and website covering the intersection of politics and technology; as well as techPresident, a group blog that covers how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web, and how content generated by voters is affecting the campaign. He has served as an advisor to Senators and Congressman and political candidates on the use of Information Technology for campaign and policy purposes since 1999.

Clay Shirky is a writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. He has a joint appointment at New York University (NYU) as a Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and Assistant Arts Professor in the New Media focused graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). His consulting practice is focused on the rise of decentralized technologies with clients including Nokia, GBN, the Library of Congress, the Highlands Forum, the Markle Foundation, and the BBC. He is the author of Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.

Tom Steinberg is the founder and director of mySociety, a non-profit, open source organization that runs many of the best-known democracy websites in the UK. By trade Tom was a hybrid policy analyst and sysadmin who mainly cut his teeth at the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit from 2001 to 2003. Tom has also advised governments and parties across a spectrum of countries, and a range of ideological positions. In 2007 he co-authored the The Power of Information Review with Ed Mayo and the Strategy Unit, and is now a member of the UK government’s Public Sector Transparency Board.

Eugene Eric Kim is the cofounder and principal of Blue Oxen Associates, developing collaborative strategies for organizations such as NASA, Institute for International Education, and the Wikimedia Foundation. He is a thought leader in the collaborative tool space, focusing especially on Wikis, digital identity, and usability.  He most recently directed computer pioneer Doug Engelbart’s HyperScope project. Previously, Eugene worked for several years as an independent consultant, served as the Senior Technical Editor at Dr. Dobb’s Journal, and authored one of the first books on web application development. He received his A.B. in History and Science from Harvard University.

City Steering Committee

Cristine Deberry, Deputy Chief of Staff, Office of the Mayor of San Francisco

Andrew Greenhill, Chief of Staff, Office of the Mayor of Tucson

Peter Koht, City of Santa Cruz

Dustin Haisler, CIO, City of Manor, TX

Tim Howell, IT Director, City of South Padre Island

Nigel Jacob, Senior Advisor for Emerging Technology, Boston City Hall

Kelly Morariu, Assistant to the City Manager, City of Hayward

James Perazzo, Director of Performance Management, New York City