My entire career has been spent in the blurry lines between spaces, as a bridge and translator between disciplines and industries—and it is a role I enjoy and thrive in. Since leaving the U.S. Digital Service in 2018, and starting with my work at Columbia University in 2016, I have been continuously focused on building the capacity of current and future policymakers to navigate a policy environment that is now entirely dependent on technology.
I am an adjunct professor at Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy, where I teach courses on Public Interest Technology and the power of design in a policy environment. I am also the faculty advisor to the Georgetown Tech Policy Initiative (a student organization that crosses schools and degree programs).
I am also on the Advisory Board of the Center on Privacy and Technology, and a founding Advisory Board member of the Public Tech Leadership Collaborative.
I used to teach at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, and have developed short courses and workshops at other universities upon request, including: Princeton, Harvard, and Stanford. Below you will find descriptions of my courses.
Please reach out if I can be helpful to you.
Digital Fundamentals
A short course that I developed as a fellow at the Beeck Center, in collaboration with my co-instructors: Afua Bruce, Mikey Dickerson, Cyd Harrell, and Dan Hon. The course was designed for professionals working in or with public institutions, with the goal of getting beyond abstractions and helping them rapidly understand the fundamentals of digital technology from a technical and operational perspective.
*This course was adapted by apolitical.
Public Interest Technology
A full semester course that I have been teaching at Georgetown University’s McCourt School for Public Policy since 2021. The course defines Public Interest Technology (PIT) in relation to public policy, ensuring that students come away from the course with a foundational and practical understanding of digital technology that is relevant to their studies and work.
It is split into 3 basic parts:
Digital Fundamentals - the basics of digital technology from a purely technical and operational perspective. What is a digital product/service, and how does it come to be?
Tech in Government (aka Civic Tech) - the role of technology in government, and in delivering better policy outcomes
Government in Tech (aka Tech Policy) - how governments deal with regulating or moderating the development and deployment of emerging technologies.
Human-Centered Design + Public Policy
A full semester course that I have been teaching at Georgetown University’s McCourt School for Public Policy since 2021. It explores definitions of Human-Centered Design, and demonstrates why it is useful in a public policy context by allowing students to put what they are learning into practice.
Design is inherently a process of sense-making and problem-solving. Design research, in particular, has proven to be a practical and valuable way to build sense-making muscles within a highly quantitative core curriculum.
While students do learn about qualitative methods in their degree programs, all of those methods require a structure for the research as a starting point. Design research breaks the structural requirement — it allows the researcher to immerse themselves in the problem space, and out of that land on a hypothesis. That then enables the researcher to create a structure as a starting point for more traditional social science research. In other words: design research can create a strong foundation for empirical research.
Civic Innovation
A half semester course that I taught at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs.