About Us

We place computer scientists, engineers, and other technologists to serve as technology policy advisors to Members of Congress through our Senior Congressional Innovation Fellowship (our mid-career pipeline), the Congressional Innovation Fellowship (our early-career pipeline), and the Congressional Digital Service Fellowship. We bridge the divide of knowledge and experience between politics and tech for better outcomes for both. 

We do so with two core values:

1. We believe diversity, equity, and inclusion should be central to all of our work.

2. We believe that ideological diversity should be central to all of our work.

We are proud to be a fiercely nonpartisan organization.

We live our values and work with Republicans, Democrats, Independents and everyone in between.

Fellows have served under the most influential members of the House and Senate including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and many, many others.

Our independence from political objectives and ideology is our core strength. Our program structure is designed to go well beyond baseline standards that Congressional Ethics rules require of us and other Congressional fellowships. We maintain our independence and our integrity through the following:

1. Our mission is to serve as a pipeline for tech expertise into the public sector. Our fellowship is the means to that end, and it gives our fellows the platform and experience to serve at the highest levels of government and in Washington. As a result, over two-thirds of our fellows stay in the public sector after the fellowship.

2. Our fellows come to us because they want to work on big problems at scale. We select fellows that want to broadly contribute and have an impact — while getting an unparalleled education into Congress and public policy — and eschew candidates with more narrow interests, policy objectives, or agendas.

3. We do not accept tech company or corporate dollars. We have a diverse funding mix with no single funder constituting more than 20% of our budget. Our funders have no influence on our decisions in terms of fellowship selection, fellowship training, or fellowship offices. 

4. We do not have policy beliefs at TechCongress, and do not advocate on issues at TechCongress. Our sole purpose is our fellowship. This standard of independence goes well beyond other Congressional fellowship programs and Congressional Ethics baseline rules and allows our fellows to work on issues without conflicts— real or perceived. We are a policy independent and agnostic organization.

5. We serve Democratic and Republican offices equally. We have placed an equal number of fellows in Republican and Democratic offices in recent years.

We are a startup non-profit. We've got great staff and advisors doing all we can to bridge the gap between government and the technology community. We work hard in an intentional and productive manner, and have fun while we do it. We are building a new generation of technology leaders, and support our staff and fellows with professional development, networking, and freedom to tinker and test new ideas. Above all, we are vigilantly focused on adding value—to our people, our institutions and our society.

We operate three fellowship programs:  

1. The Senior Congressional Innovation Fellowship, which places mid-career technologists on Capitol Hill for twelve months. 

2. The Congressional Innovation Fellowship, which places early career technologists, including graduates of technical degree programs, on Capitol Hill for ten months. 

3. The Congressional Digital Service Fellowship, a one-time program to help Congress manage the digital challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since 2016 we've sent 109 fellows to Congress who have done groundbreaking work including changing defense procurement rules to allow startups to better compete for contracts and support our service members, helping draft the House Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee report on tech monopolies, issuing House Modernization Committee’s recommendations to make Congress more effective, efficient and transparent, and passing the OPEN Government Data Act into law.

TechCongress launched in late 2015. We have grown steadily and incrementally since.