Jennifer Pahlka

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.