Staff

Jennifer Pahlka (Founder, Executive Director and Board Chair) has spent the past 15 years in the company of the technology elite. After graduating cum laude from Yale University, she went to work in the non-profit sector, but soon found herself in the business-to-business technology media world, running the Game Developers Conference.  She spent eight years at CMP Media where she led the Game Group, overseeing GDC, Game Developer magazine, and Gamasutra.com; there she also launched the Independent Games Festival and served as Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association. Recently, 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.

Alissa Black (City Program Director) has served municipal governments for over six years. She graduated from New York University in 2003 with a Master’s in Urban Planning and quickly began to apply her training in urban policy as a policy analyst for New York City’s Mayor’s Office. Her interest in government’s use of technology led her to New York City’s 311 Customer Service Center where she managed a development and design team that supported the 311 call center’s application. Working at NYC’s 311 gave Alissa insight into issues citizens faced and their inability to access government services. After a short hiatus in private consulting, Alissa joined the City & County of San Francisco’s Emerging Technologies team in 2007. 

Since joining the Emerging Technologies team, Alissa has worked on numerous projects ranging from software upgrades to business process re-engineer to her most recent accomplishment, Open311. The Open311 project was successful on many levels but mainly for Alissa’s ability to get cities, non-profits and developers to collaborate and collectively design a project together. Her years as a public servant not only give her insight into many of the challenges facing government today, they have also prepared her to be a leader and change agent amongst her peers.

Dan Melton, Ph.D., MPA (Technical Director) is a public-minded, generation-net coder passionate about cities, urban affairs and civic action.  Dan’s past projects include Urbata, an urban data mapping tool for mid-sized cities; and the Kansas City DrillDown, a multi-layered urban data mashup of utility, credit and city records that recounts the population and challenges the US Census.  A Ruby enthusiast, Dan has contributed to multiple open source projects and spends his off hours diving into USA spending data.  Hailing from the midwest, he received his bachelor’s degree in Economics and Political Science, his masters in Public Administration and doctorate in Public Affairs and Economics from the Henry Bloch School of Business and Public Administration at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

dan[@]codeforamerica.org | 415-992-7402

Abhi Nemani (Outreach Consultant) recently graduated from Claremont McKenna College with a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE). This September he starts full-time as an associate product marketing manager with Google, and is spending the summer helping get Code for America off the ground. He plans to continue to work with the organization with his 20% time at Google.

Abhi has worked closely with technology firms, political organizations, and local governments. At the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College, he oversaw the Institute’s efforts to increase transparency and efficiency in governance and witnessed first-hand the staggering need for technological development. At Google and at the Young Democrats of America, he worked with multiple teams often in different locations to develop their social media strategy. Abhi conceived of and designed our Binary Art posters, and has been writing for our blog, planning our fellow recruitment process, working on our website, and getting the word out about the fellows program.

Board of Directors

Tim O’Reilly (Board Member) 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.

Leonard Lin (Co-founder, Technical Advisor, and Board Chair) 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.

Monica Harrington (Board Member) is a business and communications strategist with a strong track record of success in both the nonprofit and private sectors. She was the founding Chief Marketing Officer for two very successful startups: 1) Valve, makers of the groundbreaking game Half-Life, which earned more than 50 Game of the Year Awards; and 2) Picnik, an innovative web-based application that has become the world’s leading online photo editor.  Monica also served as a senior policy officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she managed foundation-wide communications and served as personal media advisor for Bill and Melinda Gates.  She currently serves as a pro bono advisor to NetHope, a collaborative consortium made up CIOs and senior technical people from 28 leading international NGOs, including the Red Cross, CARE, Save the Children, World Vision, and the Nature Conservancy.

Andrew Greenhill (Board Member) 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 of Advisors

Deb Bryant, GOSCON/Open Source Lab
Kevin Curry, Bridgeborn
Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs
Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Blue State Digital
Adam Greenfield, Speedbird
Peter Corbett, iStrategyLabs
Michal Migursky & Ben Cerveny, Stamen Design
Andrew Rasiej, Personal Democracy Forum
Clay Shirky, author, Here Comes Everybody

City Steering Committee

Alissa Black, City and County 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
Kelly Morariu, Assistant to the City Manager, City of Palo Alto
Nigel Jacobs, Senior Advisor for Emerging Technology, Boston City Hall