Last December, I wrote about 2018 being a watershed year for the relationship between tech and government. For one, the Zuckerberg hearings happened, putting on full display the need for better tech literacy in the halls of Congress.
If the Facebook hearings were a low point for Congress, in 2019, the institution started to make real progress. Every committee in Congress seems to have awoken to recognize that tech is central to their jurisdiction, with tech-related hearings in Committees ranging from the Small Business Committee to the Veterans Affairs Committee. And unlike last year, in many hearings, Members of Congress were even complimented about the sophistication and depth of their questions.
Calls to reconstitute the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) have only grown louder. The House of Representatives passed $6,000,000 in seed funding for OTA, and Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) and Sen. Tom Tillis (R-NC) introduced a bipartisan bill to reform and restart the agency this fall. And just last week, the 2020 Defense Authorization bill included a provision to create a TechCongress-like fellowship for recent STEM grads to serve in the Defense Department and Congress.
Progress is happening. And we’re proud that our fellows have played a role in many of these improvements.
When I created TechCongress in 2015 I reasoned that “by 2020, technology will touch virtually all areas of life and every issue before Congress.” That statement remains on the frontpage of the website today, and has clearly come to pass.
As we enter our sixth year, and our fifth class of fellows, we are proud of these gains. As a testament to the growing interest in the field of public interest technology, this year’s fellowship recruitment cycle was our most competitive yet, with 308 highly-qualified applicants from a range of technical disciplines.
In January, we’ll welcome six new technologists to Washington and into our Congressional Innovation Fellowship. We’re thrilled to announce them and excited for the work they will do to help upskill Congress in 2020 and beyond!
Victoria Houed has worked as a Software Engineer and Product Manager at Cards Against Humanity. She founded a non-profit for black women in technology called BlackByte, worked within a mayoral campaign, and has helped organizations around Chicago think critically about the ways in which politics and technology can meet cohesively. She graduated from the Industrial Engineering school at Purdue University.
Jennie Kam is a cybersecurity professional who most recently worked as a researcher for Cisco. Her electrical engineering background enabled her vulnerability and digital forensics research to span both hardware and software domains. She is also an experienced instructor, passionate about cybersecurity and privacy education for all.
Anna Lenhart is committed to the equitable development and implementation of technological systems. She was most recently a Senior Consultant and the AI Ethics Initiative Lead for IBM’s Federal Government Consulting Division, training data scientists and operationalizing principles of explainability, fairness and data-subject rights in AI and Machine Learning systems.
Walter Pope served as a Naval Special Warfare officer and led teams in high-stress environments. He ensured the operational readiness of his unit and oversaw tactical communications systems training, mission planning, administrative functions, and logistics. Most recently, he coordinated efforts across multiple overseas teams in support of special operations and technology-driven engagements.
Peter Terpeluk is an engineer who has spent much of his career implementing new technologies, such as predictive modeling and advanced analytics, in order to drive efficiencies in large organizations. Most recently, he was a program manager at Google. Peter holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BS from the University of Pennsylvania.
John Yaros is a finance, technology, and national security expert and founder of a company focusing on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence solutions. Previously, John was a leader within the Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence and worked in high-level finance at Morgan Stanley. John specializes in using data analytics and emerging technologies to create actionable solutions.