Senior Congressional Fellow Sarah Harris has officially joined the office of Senator Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM). Sarah’s career experience spans industry, academic research, & teaching, with specialization in entrepreneurship, internet regulation, digital literacy, & similar areas. In Lujan’s office, Harris will focus on matters of artificial intelligence, connectivity, data privacy, digital services, and modernization.
Learn about Sarah’s reasons for becoming a technologist and how these motivations have carried on into her pivot to policy:
I became a technologist because I'm passionate about making information accessible for all. Through products and services like the internet, social media, cloud computing and AI assistants, I believe we have the opportunity to transform educational, civic, professional and creative opportunities. How these technologies are designed, secured, distributed and monetized are complex factors that impact their usage, and this complexity presents a major challenge to building policies that work. My goals during the fellowship are to learn all that I can about federal policymaking, and to contribute my multi-sector experience to help people on a large scale.
During my career as an entrepreneur, business leader, researcher and educator, I’ve built human-centered technology solutions, researched global internet governance and taught digital literacy at elementary, high school and university levels. While completing my Ph.D. in Media Studies, I conducted research throughout Turkey’s urban and rural areas, investigating how internet policies were implemented and circumvented. My research shed light on real-world effects of censorship policies and how companies ranging from multinational corporations to small businesses shape online access. Through that experience, I grew interested in using the vehicle of business to have a global impact.
After earning my MBA, I joined the tech sector as a product manager, a role that combines technology, business, and design and defines what specifically gets built and brought to market. At Apple, I worked on partnerships that were core to delivering Siri and other software experience, before I eventually co-founded an AI startup that built a personal assistant. Most recently, I was the Head of Product at a govtech startup that built platforms to help elected offices improve constituent services.
As I begin the fellowship, there are several approaches from my career that are top of mind for me:
Identifying the right problems to solve first before moving to solutions design
Bringing together stakeholders with differing perspectives by focusing on evidence-based decision making
Recognizing that policies have varied effects on different groups and at different time horizons; it’s more essential than ever to speak with diverse stakeholders – this means going the extra mile and reaching out to constituents with less time or advocacy resources
Remembering that interdisciplinary collaboration fosters greater innovation. While it may take more time to build a shared vocabulary across different fields, the return on investment for creativity and feasibility is high.
Questioning how we might adapt successful strategies from the tech sector, such as lean methodologies and design-thinking, to de-risk major policy decisions. These approaches – which center on stakeholder empathy and rapid experimentation – can offer valuable insights.
My hope is that these ideas will resonate with my congressional teams and that I can work across the aisle to build an understanding about technology risks and opportunities, and foster solutions that help Americans at scale.