The faces
behind the work

Anne Healy is the Chief Executive Officer of Recoding America, a new philanthropic effort to strengthen government capacity in America at the federal and state levels. She brings a nearly 20-year career across the public, social, and private sectors, building and scaling high-impact initiatives at the intersection of government capacity, rigorous evidence, and international development.

As a career civil servant at USAID, Anne led some of the agency’s boldest efforts to improve program impact per dollar, including co-founding and leading the Agency’s first Office of the Chief Economist and previously leading its tiered innovation fund, Development Innovation Ventures (DIV). She cultivated bipartisan support in Congress and multiple administrations for this outcomes focus.

She has driven more outcomes-driven public and social sectors as part of global leadership teams at J-PAL and Evidence Action and the boards of IDinsight and Busara; been an advisor to senior leaders at the State Department and served federal and state government clients at McKinsey & Company. Early in her career, she cut her teeth on randomized controlled trials in rural East Africa with Innovations for Poverty Action working with some of the world’s top economists.

Founder of Code for America and former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer, where she helped launch the U.S. Digital Service. Author of Recoding America (2023), which argues that government’s trouble delivering stems less from its policies than from its outdated operating model — the diagnosis this organization was created to act on. She co-founded Recoding America and chairs its board.

Lauren leads federal initiatives for Recoding America, bringing experience driving government modernization efforts across all levels of government, as well as experience in academia and the private sector.

Most recently, Lauren served as Deputy Policy Director for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, where she championed reforms to government technology management, service delivery, federal hiring, and procurement, helping pass more than 30 bills through the House of Representatives with several being enacted into law. Before that, she covered technology and education policy and as a TechCongress Congressional Innovation Fellow for Senator Ben Sasse.

Before coming to Capitol Hill, Lauren led a research team focused on government modernization at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. She also consulted on government management projects for the U.S. Air Force, the State of New Jersey, Lincoln, Nebraska and New Haven, Connecticut. Earlier in her career, Lauren was a Senior Data Scientist at Nielsen, where she held roles across the company’s digital, product, research and development, and international measurement teams. She began her career in California politics, working on three congressional campaigns, for the California State Board of Equalization, and as a market researcher for the Sacramento Bee. Lauren holds a B.A. in Economics from California State University, Sacramento and a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Robert Gordon is Recoding America’s Executive Vice President for State Initiatives, where he oversees the organization’s work focused on state governments across the U.S. He has served in key roles at each level and in each branch of government, with a particular focus on improving government performance.

Most recently, Robert served as Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Mobility at the White House Domestic Policy Council, overseeing education, housing, anti-crime, and anti-poverty initiatives, among others. Before that, he served as Assistant Secretary for Financial Resources at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, leading several efforts to streamline grant and service delivery while saving taxpayers money.

Between 2019 and 2021, Robert served as director of the Department of Health & Human Services for the State of Michigan, playing a key role in the early pandemic response. During the Obama-Biden Administration, Robert served as an acting deputy director and executive associate director at the Office of Management & Budget, guiding the Administration’s evidence-based policy initiatives. Earlier in his career, Robert served as a senior official at the New York City Department of Education, driving equity-focused school finance reform, as a senior aide on Capitol Hill, and as a law clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Outside government, Robert has worked as a senior vice president for global strategy and finance at the College Board, and, while a Skadden Fellow, as law guardian for children in abuse and neglect proceedings for the Juvenile Rights Division of Legal Aid in the Bronx, New York. Robert is also a visiting fellow with the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Harvard Kennedy School and at the Better Government Lab at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. He has a J.D. from Yale and a B.A. from Harvard.

As Recoding America’s COO, Benjamin oversees the functions that allow the organization to operate at scale (finance, technology, and people operations) while partnering with the leadership team on overall strategy. He ensures the organization has the right people, tools, and systems to do its best work, because capacity building starts at home.

Benjamin began his career as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he spent six years helping nonprofits, philanthropies, and public-sector organizations use technology and innovation more effectively to deliver on their missions. During his time, he designed and led the launch of new philanthropic initiatives; helped support operating model overhauls at public agencies; and advised non-profit leaders on new strategic directions.

From 2020 to 2022, Benjamin served in leadership roles across Connecticut’s Health and Human Services agencies. He led the state’s COVID vaccine rollout and then oversaw a major overhaul of benefits administration at the Department of Social Services, making it easier for Connecticut residents to enroll in WIC, SNAP, Medicaid, and TANF. Most recently, Benjamin was Chief Operating Officer at FreeWorld, where he scaled its program to serve over 1,000 returning citizens annually, making it one of the country’s largest prison reentry organizations. Benjamin holds an MBA from University College Dublin and a BA from Brandeis University. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and two children.

Taylor J. Swift is the Federal Government Affairs Director at Recoding America, where he coordinates the state capacity ecosystem, manages congressional and executive relationships, and builds the strategic political infrastructure necessary to advance key legislative reforms.

He previously served as the Director of Congressional Engagement for the Rebuild Congress Initiative (RCI), an independent initiative of the Harvard Negotiation Project. Before joining RCI, Taylor was the Director of Government Capacity at the POPVOX Foundation, where he focused on enhancing civic engagement and improving the digital tools available to Congress and its constituents. 

Earlier in his career, Taylor worked for the U.S. House of Representatives Democratic Caucus under Leader Hakeem Jeffries, focusing on issues ranging from budget and appropriations to education, labor, environmental, and tax policy. While working at the Caucus, he helped establish the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, holding dozens of listening sessions with congressional staff to provide critical insights into operational and technological shortcomings within the institution. Taylor has also been an advocate for improving conditions for congressional staff, including submitting testimony that contributed to the creation of the House Intern Resource Office. He holds a master’s degree from The University of Akron, where he worked as a Teaching Assistant at the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics.

Isabel is a Senior Policy Advisor at Recoding America, where she works on aligning incentives to policy outcomes across the federal government. She brings over 15 years of experience spanning the private sector and the executive and legislative branches, with a focus on agricultural policy. 

Most recently, Isabel worked for the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), where she led performance audits and developed recommendations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of federal programs. While at GAO, she served as a detailee to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, where she drafted and negotiated legislation.

Previously, Isabel served as counsel for the House Committee on Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and as a policy analyst for the Congressional Research Service. Earlier in her career, she worked as in-house counsel for a Farm Credit association and State Farm. Across these roles, Isabel has developed a broad understanding of how policy moves from legislation and appropriations through agency implementation, oversight, evaluation, and litigation—and ultimately how users and regulated entities experience program delivery and regulation in practice. Isabel has a J.D. and M.S. from the University of Illinois and a B.A. from New York University.

Anna Heetderks is a Federal Policy Analyst at Recoding America, where she supports the organization’s federal policy and programmatic work. Anna is passionate about building public institutions that effectively support human flourishing and serve the common good. Her interest in state capacity and the mechanics of governing has led her to roles with the Brookings Institution’s Center for Effective Public Management and, most recently, with the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, where she worked on federal prison oversight. Anna received her bachelor’s in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia and her MPP from UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.

Amy Chang is Director for State Initiatives at Recoding America, bringing experience from the public and private sector to improve how state governments work at scale. Amy has led major policy and operational efforts focused on strengthening organizational delivery. Her work has spanned crisis response, resource allocation, policy development, and cross-agency implementation of high-priority initiatives.

She recently served as Senior Advisor to the Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where she drove cross-departmental initiatives and reforms, including redesigning the department’s discretionary budgeting process to better align resources with strategic priorities and supporting the development of a department-wide preparedness policy platform. Previously, she served on the White House COVID-19 Response Team, where she helped develop and operationalize vaccine allocation and distribution strategy, led interagency coordination, including on Long COVID, and supported data-driven decision-making during the acute phase of the pandemic response by helping stand up new data systems and conduct scenario planning. She also served on two federal transition teams, contributing to day-one priorities and early executive and legislative initiatives.

Amy has also led strategy and operations efforts at an early-stage vaccine research and design company, building financial models to inform major corporate investment decisions and instituting processes to guide product development. Earlier in her career, Amy served in the Office of the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and advised public- and private-sector organizations at Boston Consulting Group and Deloitte Consulting on market strategy, organizational growth, innovation, and operational transformation.

Amy holds a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and Global Affairs from Yale University and a Master’s in Public Affairs with a concentration in economics from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs.

Andie is Senior Director for State Initiatives at Recoding America, where she helps state governments deliver better outcomes for residents.

Before joining Recoding America, Andie spent over a dozen years serving in federal, state, and local government. Andie built a reputation as someone who can navigate complex bureaucracies to get things done, whether passing a policy reform, launching a major new program, or turning around an underperforming operation. In addition to spanning levels of government, Andie’s experience spans a broad range of policy and operations subject areas, giving her a unique, cross-disciplinary perspective.

Most recently, she served as Deputy Chief Operating Officer for the City of Detroit, where she helped oversee City departments with 4,000 employees and an annual budget of $1.3 billion. She also led major policy and operations initiatives, including reforming the City’s permitting process, proposing a zoning overhaul to make it easier to build housing, and helping turn around longstanding operational challenges in the City’s bus system.

Andie previously served in the U.S. Treasury Department, playing a central role in launching an unprecedented $350 billion program providing pandemic aid to 30,000 state and local governments. Earlier in her career, she served as Chief of Staff at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Finally, she has also worked in state government, at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, where she led the department’s response to the opioid crisis and expanded access to COVID-19 testing during the early days of the pandemic.

Atharv Gupta is a Senior Associate for State Initiatives, supporting Recoding America’s portfolio of state engagements and its AI deproceduralization work. He is fascinated by how governments build and deploy digital infrastructure. He has studied public digital infrastructure across several sectors, most recently as a fellow at a venture capital fund, investing in early-stage hard-tech start-ups. Before this, Atharv spent time at the U.S. State Department, the World Bank, and several risk consultancies and nonprofits. As a U.S. Rhodes Scholar, Atharv received two Master’s degrees. The first was an MSc from the Oxford Internet Institute, where he researched the adoption of India’s digital payments infrastructure by small, informal vendors. The second degree was an MA in Creative Writing. He received his bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, studying Science, Technology, and International Affairs, with minors in Mandarin Chinese and Computer Science.

As a Senior Advisor and a member of the Advisory Council, Reeve shapes Recoding America’s agenda and engagement with states aimed at simplifying regulations and reducing burdens both inside and outside government, including through the use of AI.

Reeve recently concluded his term as the Director of the Virginia Office of Regulatory Management. In this position, he led the Commonwealth’s efforts to streamline regulations and promote a transparent permitting process, and develop and implement an artificial intelligence policy. Before this role, he was the Research Director of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), where he worked on projects related to international regulatory cooperation, the use of science by administrative agencies, presidential review of agency rulemaking, and regulatory benefit-cost analysis, among other things.

Reeve is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a Public Member of ACUS. He has served on the Council of the ABA Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section and also co-chaired the Section’s Rulemaking Committee. Reeve served as an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University and at George Mason University Law School. He has published articles in leading law journals exploring, for example, enhanced judicial review of agency regulatory impact analysis, removing unnecessary trade barriers through enhanced international regulatory cooperation, and reducing regulatory burdens through retrospective review of existing rules.

Reeve previously worked as an associate at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and as a law clerk to the Honorable Alvin A. Schall of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. His experience spanned a variety of practice areas, including administrative, constitutional, intellectual property, antitrust, environmental, securities, and white collar criminal law. He has his law degree from Duke University and graduated from the University of Oklahoma.

Angelica "Angie" Quirarte is a Director at Recoding America, where she works with states to transform workforce and civil service systems to meet the needs of the digital age and leads our partnership with the State of North Carolina. She is a distinguished public service leader who draws on her experience transforming government in California and at the White House to inspire collaboration that builds empowered teams, improves public-sector service delivery, and achieves impactful policy outcomes. Over the past year, she has partnered with various organizations to strengthen their people, operations, and technology strategies, ensuring that government systems are as adaptive as the communities they serve.

Most recently, Angie served as a Senior Advisor for Talent Strategy and Service Delivery in the White House Office of Management and Budget. In this role, she supported the AI Talent Surge and the policy implementation of the President’s Management Agenda Workforce Priority. As the lead for the Federal Portfolio at the Tech Talent Project, she successfully matched over 40 high-level executives to critical federal roles to modernize government capacity. Her recent contributions to federal hiring and talent strategy earned her the prestigious 2024 Fed100 award.

In California, Angie held key leadership roles, including Assistant Secretary for Digital Engagement at the Government Operations Agency and Deputy Director of the Office of Digital Innovation. She was a member of Governor Newsom’s DMV Strike Team, which fundamentally transformed the Department of Motor Vehicles, and led the “Alpha” team for CA.gov. This initiative pioneered a new model for digital teams and culminated in the launch of the California Office of Digital (Data) and Innovation. During the state’s most critical period, she led the product team behind covid19.ca.gov, serving as a primary leader for all COVID-19 digital response efforts across the state.

Beyond her executive roles, Angie is a dedicated advocate for the public sector workforce. She founded NxtGov, a network of government change-agents working to break down silos, restore pride in public service, and inspire the next generation of civil servants. Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Angie immigrated to the Bay Area at age ten. She holds a BA in History of Public Policy from UC Santa Barbara. She is a firm believer that effective government is built on the intersection of empathy, data, and design.

David is a Senior States Initiatives Advisor at Recoding America, where he partners with states to modernize civil service systems and build the government capacity needed to deliver on policy goals. He brings more than 15 years of experience in federal government management operations.

Most recently, he served as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Management at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) (2022–2025), also serving as Senior Counselor to the Deputy Secretary, supporting the operational leadership of a 268,000-employee organization with a $105 billion annual budget.

At DHS, David led implementation of six organizational capacity priorities spanning workforce modernization, infrastructure, service delivery, and AI governance. He built performance measurement systems with 60-80 measurable annual goals tracked across all organizational levels. His work contributed to DHS being named the most-improved large agency in the Partnership for Public Service’s 2023 “Best Places to Work” rankings. Through this effort, he helped reduce time-to-hire by 14% year-over-year, oversaw facility improvements across 80 locations, and helped redesign a major public-facing digital platform that cut average user completion time by 36%.

Prior to DHS, David spent a decade at the State Department (2011–2021) managing complex multilateral programs, leading cross-functional teams of up to 40 professionals, and aligning operational execution with strategic foreign policy objectives. He has also provided consulting services to the Executive Office of the President and a range of political and advocacy campaigns.

David holds a master’s degree in political management and a Bachelor of Arts in political communication from George Washington University. David has been deeply engaged in the local community, providing pro bono support to the Arlington Public Health Division during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as volunteering at a D.C. food pantry since 2003.

Bridget Williamson is the Head of Finance at Recoding America, where she builds and leads the organization’s financial strategy, planning, and operations functions. In this role, she partners closely with the leadership team to provide financial insights and to help translate strategy to implementation.

Most recently, Bridget served as Vice President of Finance at Arnold Ventures, a multi-billion dollar philanthropy, where she built and led the organization’s finance function for grantmaking. In that role, she developed organization-wide budgeting frameworks, financial policies, and due diligence processes to support strategic investments. She helped structure and evaluate complex, multi-year initiatives, bringing greater clarity to cost, risk, and impact across the organization’s portfolio.

Earlier in her career, Bridget held roles in corporate and energy banking, where she underwrote and structured large-scale credit facilities and managed substantial asset portfolios. She holds a B.B.A. in Finance from Southern Methodist University and lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and two daughters.

Sheri Signer leads operational initiatives at Recoding America Fund, where she supports the buildout of the organization’s internal infrastructure, process strategy, and the technology that connects them.

Sheri is a strategic operations leader and systems thinker with a passion for data and technology at the intersection of philanthropic and nonprofit work. Her commitment to the social sector is rooted in firsthand experience with food justice and food security, work that shaped how she thinks about equity, access, and what it means to build systems that actually serve people.

Most recently, she served as Principal of Project and Program Management at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, where she built and ran enterprise-wide systems for strategy execution, aligning projects with organizational strategic plans, designing an equity-centered onboarding program, and leading change management initiatives. Through her consulting practice, she works with philanthropic organizations and national nonprofits on operations and systems redesign, focused on programmatic and funding management.

Sheri attended SUNY College at Purchase and Teachers College, Columbia University for Nonprofit and Arts Administration. She has earned certificates in Project Management from Cornell University and Monitoring and Evaluation from NYU and is a certified Project Management Professional.

Jenny Kim is the managing partner of Five Rings Law Group. With expert knowledge in lobbying laws, government ethics and conflict of interest laws, campaign finance laws, and tax-exempt laws at the U.S. federal, state, and local levels of government, Jenny Kim advises corporations, non-profit organizations, political organizations, and business associations in their efforts to impact public policy and the political process. For over two decades, Jenny has developed a reputation for successfully collaborating with institutional and individual clients to develop and implement legal strategies that achieve public policy and political objectives while mitigating and managing risk.

Previously, Jenny served as the Philanthropy Roundtable’s vice president of operations and general counsel. She was responsible for managing the Roundtable’s legal issues and operations, including information technology and human resources. Previously, she was deputy general counsel for political law and vice president of public policy at Koch Industries, one of the largest private companies in America.

Jenny currently serves as a board member of Due Process Institute, Institute for Free Speech, and The Just Trust. She was elected to the inaugural membership of the 2020 Council on Criminal Justice and serves on the Legal Services Corporation Leaders Council. She speaks fluent Korean and conversational French. Jenny is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia.

Jennifer Pahlka is a pioneer in transforming how the government serves the American people in the digital age. Ezra Klein called her book Recoding America “one of the best policy books I have ever read” and “the book I wish all policymakers would read.”

In 2010, she founded Code for America, placing startup teams inside City Halls to demonstrate what's possible when government adopts user-centered, data-driven approaches to pressing problems. In 2013, Jennifer was recruited to be US Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Government Innovation. At the White House, she founded the United States Digital Service, which brought in hundreds of technologists to transform how critical government services are delivered. She then returned to Code for America, which she led until 2020, when she co-founded US Digital Response during the Covid pandemic.

Jennifer’s public service also includes four years on the Defense Innovation Board under Presidents Obama and Trump and co-chairing a strike team on the unemployment insurance backlog for California Governor Newsom. She is currently an executive in residence at the Johns Hopkins School of Government and Policy.

Jennifer is the winner of a Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and was selected by Wired magazine as one of the people who have most shaped technology and society in the past twenty-five years.

Charlie Anderson is the Executive Vice President for Infrastructure at Arnold Ventures, where he leads efforts to advance building infrastructure faster, better, and at lower cost in the United States, including housing, transportation, and energy.

Charlie brings more than 15 years of high-level economic policy experience across the federal executive and legislative branches. Before joining Arnold Ventures, he served as a special assistant to the president for economic policy at the White House National Economic Council (NEC). In that role, he led the NEC's permitting and environmental review work in preparation for the opportunities presented by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act.

In 2021 and early 2022, Charlie was the director of Economic Policy and Budget for the COVID-19 Response Team. Previously, he served as the senior advisor for Tax and Economic Policy to Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) from 2017 to 2021, developing policies to expand the child tax credit (CTC), reform unemployment insurance, and address the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before his four years in the Senate, he served as special assistant to the president for Economic Policy and senior advisor to the director at the White House National Economic Council from 2014 to 2017; at the Department of the Treasury from 2010 to 2013; and at the White House Domestic Policy Council from 2009 to 2010.

Born in New York and raised in North Carolina, Charlie earned a Master of Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School and a BA in Public Policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Galen Hines-Pierce is the Founder and Principal of the Minerva Fund, which supports democratic governance and public-sector innovation by investing alongside major foundations and research centers.

​Galen advises numerous organizations and serves on several boards, including the American Governance Institute, Center for Civic Futures, Loomis Innovation Council at the Stimson Center, Harris Council at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, and Center for Effective Government. Additionally, he is a founding board member of the Center for Public Intelligence. He is also a strategic advisor to the Digital Parliaments Project, which supports digital transformation for parliaments in Caribbean and African nations, and is a co-founder of the AI-Enabled Policymaking Project (AIPP), a collaboration between the RAND Corporation, the Stimson Center, and the Tony Blair Institute.

​Previously, Galen served at the U.S. Department of Labor, where he helped run the Trade Adjustment Assistance program and supported trade negotiations and related congressional approvals.

​Galen earned a Master of Public Policy from the University of Chicago's Harris School and a BA in International Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Sons of the American Revolution. He lives in Texas with his wife and three children.

Santi Ruiz runs Statecraft, a newsletter and podcast about how policy actually happens, at the Institute for Progress (IFP). He leads editorial for The Anthropic Institute.

Before joining Anthropic, Santi was IFP’s Editorial Director. He is a Journalist-in-Residence at the Johns Hopkins School of Government and Policy. Santi previously served as the Executive Director of Interact, a global community of technologists, and covered science and tech for the Washington Free Beacon.

Judge Glock is the director of research and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at City Journal. He specializes in economic policy and civil service reform, with a focus on the intersection of economics, finance, and housing.

Before joining the Manhattan Institute, Glock served as the senior director of policy and research at the Cicero Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in Austin, and as a visiting professor of economics at West Virginia University. His background in economic history informs his work, and he writes about public finance, monetary policy, regulatory reform, and urban affairs.

Glock's work has been featured in National Affairs, Tax Notes, the Journal of American History, NPR, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, among other places. He is the author of The Dead Pledge: The Origins of the Mortgage Market and Federal Bailouts, 1913-1939, published in 2021 by Columbia University Press.

He received his Ph.D. in history with a focus on economic history from Rutgers University and his undergraduate degree from William & Mary.

Jennifer Pahlka is a pioneer in transforming how the government serves the American people in the digital age. Ezra Klein called her book Recoding America “one of the best policy books I have ever read” and “the book I wish all policymakers would read.”

In 2010, she founded Code for America, placing startup teams inside City Halls to demonstrate what's possible when government adopts user-centered, data-driven approaches to pressing problems. In 2013, Jennifer was recruited to be US Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Government Innovation. At the White House, she founded the United States Digital Service, which brought in hundreds of technologists to transform how critical government services are delivered. She then returned to Code for America, which she led until 2020, when she co-founded US Digital Response during the Covid pandemic.

Jennifer’s public service also includes four years on the Defense Innovation Board under Presidents Obama and Trump and co-chairing a strike team on the unemployment insurance backlog for California Governor Newsom. She is currently an executive in residence at the Johns Hopkins School of Government and Policy.

Jennifer is the winner of a Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and was selected by Wired magazine as one of the people who have most shaped technology and society in the past twenty-five years.

Sam Mar leads Saber Strategies, a philanthropic and political consultancy.

Before Saber, Sam was Executive Vice President and Senior Advisor at Arnold Ventures, where he led the organization's advocacy, grant-making, communications, and government affairs across a range of initiatives, including climate and clean energy, election reform, immigration, and organ donation. Before that, he served as CEO of the Action Now Initiative, a political advocacy organization founded by Laura and John Arnold.

Sam began his career in the private sector, spending a decade in consulting, banking, investment management, and product innovation. He has held various positions globally in technology consulting, banking, asset management, private equity, and product innovation.

Sam is a member of the Board of Unite America, ClearPath, Bipartisan Climate Action, and the Conservative Climate Caucus PAC. He also serves as a Senior Advisor on policy at the Polynera Fund. Sam is a graduate of the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and IE Business School.

Nicholas Bagley is the Thomas G. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center. He is an expert in administrative law and health law.

In 2020 and 2022, Bagley served as special counsel and then chief legal counsel to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. His academic work has been widely published, including in the Harvard Law Review and the Columbia Law Review, and he contributes frequently to popular outlets such as The New York Times and The Atlantic.

Before joining Michigan Law, Bagley was an attorney with the appellate staff in the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he argued a dozen cases before the U.S. Courts of Appeals and acted as lead counsel in many more. He clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens at the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge David S. Tatel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Before law school, Bagley joined Teach For America and taught eighth-grade English at a public school in New York City. He received his J.D. from New York University School of Law and his B.A. in English from Yale University.

Dean Woodley Ball is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation. He most recently served as Senior Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Trump administration, where he was the primary staff drafter of America’s AI Action Plan. He also served as Strategic Advisor for AI at the National Science Foundation.

Previously, Dean was a Research Fellow in the Artificial Intelligence & Progress Project at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. He is the author of Hyperdimensional, a prominent newsletter on AI policy. His work focuses on emerging technologies and the future of governance, and publications by the Mercatus Center, the Hoover Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Federation of American Scientists, the Manhattan Institute, and American Compass have featured his scholarship.

Before his government service, Dean held senior positions at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, and the Manhattan Institute, where he oversaw the Hayek Book Prize. Dean serves on the Board of Directors of the Alexander Hamilton Institute and was selected as an Aspen Ideas Fellow. He graduated magna cum laude from Hamilton College with a B.A. in History and lives in Washington, DC.

Ben Buchanan is the Dmitri Alperovitch Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where he is an expert in the intersection of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and statecraft.

From 2021 to 2025, Buchanan served in the Biden White House, including as White House Special Advisor for Artificial Intelligence, where he coordinated the Biden Administration’s AI policy. He also served as Director for Technology and National Security on the National Security Council and held key roles at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In these roles, he helped craft major AI policy deliverables, including two Executive Orders on AI, the National Security Memorandum on AI, and the United Nations General Assembly resolution on AI.

Before his White House service, Buchanan was Director of the CyberAI Project at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), where he was also a Senior Faculty Fellow and Assistant Teaching Professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Buchanan is the author of three books: The New Fire: War, Peace, and Democracy in the Age of AI (MIT Press, 2022), The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics (Harvard University Press, 2020), and The Cybersecurity Dilemma (Oxford University Press, 2017). His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, War on the Rocks, and Lawfare.

He earned his Ph.D. in War Studies as a Marshall Scholar at King’s College London, following master’s and undergraduate degrees from Georgetown University.

As a Senior Advisor and a member of the Advisory Council to Recoding America, Reeve shapes Recoding America’s agenda and engagement with states aimed at simplifying regulations and reducing burdens both inside and outside government, including through the use of AI.

Reeve recently concluded his term as the Director of the Virginia Office of Regulatory Management. In this position, he led the Commonwealth’s efforts to streamline regulations and promote a transparent permitting process, and develop and implement an artificial intelligence policy. Before this role, he was the Research Director of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), where he worked on projects related to international regulatory cooperation, the use of science by administrative agencies, presidential review of agency rulemaking, and regulatory benefit-cost analysis, among other things.

Reeve is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a Public Member of ACUS. He has served on the Council of the ABA Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section and also co-chaired the Section’s Rulemaking Committee. Reeve served as an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University and at George Mason University Law School. He previously worked as an associate at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and as a law clerk to the Honorable Alvin A. Schall of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. He has his law degree from Duke University and graduated from the University of Oklahoma.

G.T. Bynum currently serves as the Vice President for Community & Government Affairs in the Saint Francis Health System. G.T. served on the Tulsa City Council (2008-2016) and as Mayor of Tulsa (2016-2024). As mayor, G.T. guided Tulsa through its greatest public health crisis and major natural disasters while never losing an election, for office or in support of public improvements.

He led the physical transformation of Tulsa — Zink Lake, Gilcrease Museum, the Gathering Place, and other major public projects — while fostering a historic boom in private sector investment ranging from Amazon to American Airlines. He initiated the search for unmarked graves of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre victims, created the Tulsa Police Real Time Information Center, and paved more miles of road than any mayor in Tulsa history.

G.T. is married to Susan Bynum, Vice President of the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa. They are the proud parents of Robert and Annabel — the sixth generation of Bynums to call Tulsa home.

Solitaire Carroll draws on her experience in public service to write about digital government with the Niskanen Center. She served as the Acting Director of the Veterans Experience Services (VES) Portfolio in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, where she supported cross-VA innovation and collaboration for the PACT Act, the largest expansion of benefits for Veterans in a generation. She co-authored the 701B initiative, a multi-billion-dollar modernization effort to transform veteran engagement with the VA.

Carroll oversaw multiple innovation efforts in the development, training, and implementation of new processes for VA IT Portfolio and Investment management, working across silos of business and technology to help the VA prioritize and deliver the right IT solutions to Veterans and their families and caregivers. She previously served as Portfolio Integration Lead at the VA from 2020 to 2023 and Deputy Director of VES from 2023-2025.

Before joining the VA, Carroll worked as Deputy Program Manager at GovernmentCIO and spent over five years at Booz Allen Hamilton, where she developed DEPSEC-level decision briefings and served as a senior consultant supporting the VA’s Interoperability Office. She also worked as a Market Intelligence Analyst at SRA International and as a Research Analyst at INPUT.

Tyler Cowen is the Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and serves as chairman and faculty director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. With colleague Alex Tabarrok, Cowen is co-author of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution and co-founder of the online educational platform Marginal Revolution University.

A dedicated writer and communicator of economic ideas, Cowen is the author of several bestselling books and is widely published in academic journals and the popular media. Cowen’s latest project is a generative book, The Marginal Revolution: Rise and Decline, and the Pending AI Revolution. In 2022, Cowen and co-author Daniel Gross published the book Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World. He writes a column for The Free Press and was previously a columnist with Bloomberg View and The New York Times.

Cowen is the founder of Emergent Ventures, an incubator fellowship and grant program for social entrepreneurs with highly scalable ideas for meaningfully improving society. As a response to the 2020 pandemic, Cowen created Fast Grants, an offshoot of Emergent Ventures, to swiftly support scientists working on COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. In total, Fast Grants raised more than $50 million and awarded 260 grants toward critical research.

Cowen is host of Conversations with Tyler, a popular podcast series featuring today’s most underrated thinkers. He graduated from George Mason University with a BS in economics and received his PhD in economics from Harvard University.

Marc J. Dunkelman is a fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and a former fellow at NYU’s Marron Institute of Urban Management. He specializes in politics, community, and infrastructure policy.

During more than a decade working in politics, Dunkelman worked for Democratic members of both the Senate and the House of Representatives and served as a senior fellow at the Clinton Foundation. He is the author of two books: Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress — And How to Bring It Back (2025) and The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community (2014).

Dunkelman’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Atlantic, and Politico, among other publications. His recent writing has focused on government effectiveness, infrastructure implementation, and the challenges facing democracy.

Chris Griswold is the Policy Director at American Compass, a think tank dedicated to restoring an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity. He has served in this role since March 2021.

Before joining American Compass, Griswold served as a senior advisor in the U.S. Senate. Before working on Capitol Hill, he helped launch and run a nationwide youth development nonprofit in South Africa.

Griswold currently serves as a Non-Resident Fellow at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry in Tokyo, Japan (since July 2025), and previously served as a CFR-Hitachi International Affairs Fellow in Japan in 2023. He also served as a Louis O. Kelso Fellow at Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations from 2024 to 2025.

His writing has appeared in the New York Times, National Affairs, Dallas Morning News, Newsweek, American Affairs, Comment, and The Hill, among other publications. He is a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dan Ho is the William Benjamin Scott and Luna M. Scott Professor of Law at Stanford University, where he is also Professor of Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), and Director of the Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab (RegLab).

Dan served on the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee (NAIAC), advising the White House on AI policy, and as Senior Advisor on Responsible AI at the U.S. Department of Labor. He has also served as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Through RegLab, his work develops high-impact demonstration projects in data science and machine learning for public policy, partnering with government agencies including the IRS, the Treasury Department, the EPA, and the Department of Labor.

Dan received his J.D. from Yale Law School and Ph.D. in government from Harvard University, and clerked for Judge Stephen F. Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Jeanne Lambrew is Director of Health Care Reform and Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation and former Commissioner of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.

Previously, Dr. Lambrew served as a Senior Health Policy Analyst at the National Economic Council, where she conducted and coordinated health policy analysis on Medicaid, Medicare, and new health initiatives. Working under the direction of the National Economic Council Chair and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council, her responsibilities included policy development, evaluation of legislative proposals, and coordination of policy analysis and cost estimates across the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Treasury Department, the Labor Department, and other relevant agencies.

Dr. Lambrew also served as an assistant professor of public policy at Georgetown University, where she researched managed care for low-income families and the roles of Medicare and Medicaid in long-term care. From 1993 to 1995, she served as a special assistant coordinating Medicaid and state studies at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Lambrew holds her M.A. and Ph.D. from the Department of Health Policy at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Marshall Kosloff is a Senior Fellow and Director of Special Projects at the Niskanen Center, where he develops programs and partnerships to address the governance and policy challenges of the 2020s. In this role, he served as master of ceremonies at the 2024 and 2025 Abundance Conferences.

Kosloff hosts The Realignment at Niskanen, a podcast launched in 2016 to examine the profound shifts transforming American politics and society. He also hosts the Arsenal of Democracy podcast at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Oregon.

Outside of Niskanen, he serves as Executive Producer of Endless Frontiers, an annual gathering in Austin, Texas that convenes leaders in government, technology, and national security. He is also a Senior Fellow at UT Austin’s Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and serves on the Welcome Committee for Bloomberg Beta’s annual Going to Work conference.

Zachary Liscow is Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where he teaches courses on taxation, tax policy, and economic inequality. In 2022-23, he served as Chief Economist at the Office of Management and Budget at the White House.

His wide-ranging work in law and economics covers tax policy, benefit-cost analysis, and infrastructure construction costs. He is particularly interested in developing cost-effective policies to address inequality and understanding what drives the high costs of building U.S. infrastructure. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, CNN, and elsewhere.

Previously, Liscow served as a Staff Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers (2009-2010) and worked for the World Bank’s inspector general. He clerked for Judge Stephen F. Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Liscow earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and his J.D. from Yale Law School. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College with degrees in Economics and in Environmental Science and Public Policy.

Marina Nitze is a crisis engineer helping organizations solve mission-critical challenges, with a particular focus on improving America’s child welfare system. She is a co-author of Crisis Engineering and Hack Your Bureaucracy and a partner at Layer Aleph. This crisis engineering firm specializes in restoring complex business systems to service.

Marina served as Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs from 2013 to 2017, where she built the first agency United States Digital Service team. Her portfolio included vets.gov, Caseflow, and other modernization efforts. Previously, she served as Senior Advisor on technology in the Obama White House and as the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the U.S. Department of Education as part of the inaugural class of Presidential Innovation Fellows.

Marina is a Fellow at New America’s New Practice Lab, where she leads a 35-state working group on foster care reform through the Child Welfare Playbook. She has been a volunteer Court-Appointed Special Advocate for at-risk foster youth for over 20 years. She serves on the board of Renaissance Philanthropy and advisory boards of the Center for Civic Futures, Foster America, and Think of Us.

Stephanie Pollack served as Deputy Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration from 2021 to 2023. From 2015 to 2021, she served as Secretary and CEO of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation under Governor Charlie Baker, becoming the first female secretary of transportation in Massachusetts.

Before joining MassDOT, Pollack worked for the Conservation Law Foundation for over two decades, rising to senior VP and acting president before departing in 2006. She also served as a senior research associate and senior director at Northeastern University’s Center for Urban and Regional Policy, and as an adjunct professor at Northeastern University School of Law, from 2004 to 2015.

Pollack holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering and a B.S. in public policy from MIT and graduated magna cum laude with a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Dr. Stefanie Sanford is President of Civic Ventures at Alithi Consulting and Humanitae Philanthropy Advisors, where she leads efforts to improve civic knowledge and engagement, transcend polarization, and animate spirited and effective conversation across differences in multiple contexts and policy areas.

Over the last 20 years, she has held executive roles in philanthropy, education policy, and government. Most recently, she served as Chief of Global Policy and External Relations for the College Board and President of the College Board Foundation. Previously, she spent over 10 years at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, beginning as the first education advocacy program officer and rising to Director of U.S. Program Advocacy.

Sanford began her career serving in both Republican and Democratic administrations in Texas, in various roles advising the Governor, Lt. Governor, Speaker of the House, and Attorney General. At the federal level, she was selected as a White House Fellow, serving in the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs.

She currently chairs the Board of Trustees for the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, is Vice Chair of America’s Promise Alliance, and serves as a trustee of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and Planet Word, the Museum of Language. She is the author of Civic Life in the Information Age: Politics, Technology and Generation X and holds an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas.

Daniel Stid is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where his work focuses on civil society, philanthropy, and democratic governance. His fortnightly newsletter, The Art of Association, explores these themes.

Before joining AEI in 2025, Dr. Stid served as Executive Director of Lyceum Labs, a nonprofit dedicated to improving political leadership and party politics in the United States. Previously, he was Director of the U.S. Democracy Program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (2020-2022) and Director of The Madison Initiative (2014-2020), where he led the Foundation’s effort to improve U.S. democracy on a nonpartisan basis, making $180 million in grants during his tenure.

Earlier in his career, Stid was a Partner at the Bridgespan Group and a Manager at Boston Consulting Group, where he helped initiate the firm’s work with the U.S. federal government. He served as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow in the U.S. House of Representatives and was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Wabash College.

Dr. Stid is the author of The President as Statesman: Woodrow Wilson and the Constitution (1998). He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, a master’s degree from the University of Oxford, and a bachelor’s degree from Hope College.