Senior Tech Leaders Join Harvard Kennedy School’s Technology and Public Purpose Project as Non-Resident Fellows

Cambridge, MA – The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School is pleased to announce the Technology and Public Purpose Project's non-resident fellows for the 2020-21 academic year.

In addition to our current non-resident fellows, we welcome five new leaders from tech and government: Dana Chisnell, former member at the U.S Digital Service and editor of the Field Guides To Ensuring Voter Intent; Lisa Gelobter, CEO and Co-founder of tEQuitable and former Chief Digital Service Officer at the Department of Education; Marc Lanoue, Anti-trust attorney for the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition; Nick Sinai, Senior Advisor at Insight Venture Partners and former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer for the Obama Administration; and Emily Tavoulareas, founding member of U.S Digital Service and fellow at Georgetown's Beeck Center. These five leaders from technology and government join our current non-resident fellows. Read more about all of the Technology and Public Purpose Project’s non-resident fellows below.

 “I am proud to welcome these top industry and public leaders to the Technology and Public Purpose (TAPP) Project. Through their appointment, they will contribute uniquely to our project’s mission of ensuring that emerging technologies are developed and managed in ways that serve the overall public good.” — Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter

TAPP Project Non-Resident Senior Fellows

Lisa Gelobter is the CEO and Founder of tEQuitable. Using technology to make workplaces more equitable, tEQuitable provides a confidential platform to address bias, discrimination, and harassment.

Lisa has worked on products that have been used by billions of people and on several pioneering Internet technologies, including Shockwave, Hulu, and the ascent of online video.

Most recently, she worked at the Obama White House, serving as the Chief Digital Service Officer for the Department of Education. Previously, Lisa acted as the Chief Digital Officer for BET Networks.

Lisa is one of Inc.'s 100 Women Building America's Most Innovative and Ambitious Businesses, Fast Company’s Most Creative People, and serves on boards for: the Obama Foundation, Times Up, and The Education Trust.

Lisa is one of the first 40 Black women ever to have raised over $1mm in VC funding. She is also proud to be a Black woman with a Computer Science degree. Go STEM!

DJ Patil is currently the Head of Technology at Devoted Health and a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Patil was appointed by President Obama to be the first U.S. Chief Data Scientist where his efforts led to the establishment of nearly 40 Chief Data Officer roles across the Federal government. He has been active in national security and was awarded by Secretary Carter the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service.

He also was Chief Scientist, Chief Security Officer and Head of Analytics and Data Product Teams at the LinkedIn Corporation where he co-coined the term Data Scientist. He has also held a number of roles at Skype, PayPal, and eBay. He was previously a faculty member at the University of Maryland and a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow for the Department of Defense. In 2014, he was selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader and is also a Member of the Council of Foreign Relations.

Nick Sinai is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the TAPP Program.  Nick served as HKS adjunct faculty, where he taught (2015-2020) a technology and innovation in government field class.  Nick is a Senior Advisor at Insight Partners, a leading global venture capital firm investing in high-growth software companies. Insight Partners has raised more than $29 billion and invested in more than 300 growth-stage software companies. Previously, Nick served as U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer in the Obama White House. He led President Obama’s Open Data Initiatives, co-authored President Obama’s 2013 Executive Order making open and machine-readable the default for new government information, led the relaunch of Data.gov, and served a national advocate for open government data. Nick also helped start and grow the Presidential Innovation Fellows program, which brings entrepreneurs and technologists into government. Nick is an advisor to Upsolve, a nonprofit that improves consumer access to Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, and Coding It Forward, a nonprofit that places computer science, data science, and design students in federal agencies.

TAPP Project, Non-Resident Fellows

Dana Chisnell is a pioneer and thought leader in civic design. As a Senior Fellow at the National Conference on Citizenship, she is partner-founder in a civic startup called Project Redesign where she works to put humans at the center of public policy. Her most recent work was a large qualitative study about the experience of people applying for unemployment assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of her career has involved studying design in voting and election administration. She is the managing editor of the Field Guides To Ensuring Voter Intent, which are in use in thousands of election offices worldwide. The Field Guides are in the permanent collection at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. She was a founding member of the U.S. Digital Service in the Obama White House. In 2019, Dana was named one of the world’s most influential people in digital government by Apolitical.

Gretchen Greene, C.Phil., M.S., J.D., is an international AI policy advisor, lawyer, computer vision scientist, and former U.S. national lab mathematician, developing AI and human rights policy guidance and industry best practices. Greene has worked for the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security, the U.K. House of Lords, MIT, Harvard, and Partnership on AI. Greene has been interviewed on AI policy and face recognition by the BBC and Politico Europe, testified on biometrics bills, written AI guidance read in ~8,000 cities, developed algorithms for autonomous car navigation and terrorist tracking, and published in machine learning, policy and science journals. Greene is a fellow at the Belfer Center, a senior advisor at The Hastings Center, counsel at Baker Thomas law, and CEO at Greene Strategy. The ethics of AI and emotional intelligence. Government briefing book: Emerging technologies and human rights. EqualAIs.

Marc Lanoue is an antitrust attorney with an interest in the role of competition law and regulation in creating market conditions and incentives that foster technological innovation and promote public welfare.

Since 2017, Marc has been detailed from his position in the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition to serve as counsel for the Minority on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee for Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, which have focused considerable attention on technology-related sectors, including digital platforms, pharmaceuticals, and telecommunications. At the Federal Trade Commission, Marc has led or worked on antitrust investigations into the pharmaceuticals, energy, and digital advertising industries, among others. He also spent several years in private practice, including an extended in-house stint assisting a pharmaceutical client with competition and product development issues.

Marc earned a J.D. from the New York University School of Law and a B.A. in Economics and Geology & Geophysics from Yale College. 

Chris Lynch is the chief executive officer of Rebellion Defense. Previously, he was the founding director of Defense Digital Service (DDS), a SWAT team of exceptional software engineers focused on the Department of Defense's most critical technology challenges. He served three secretaries of defense, launching numerous high-impact programs, including Hack the Pentagon, JEDI Cloud, counter-drone solutions, and providing technical expertise on programs including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and next-generation GPS OCX. He was an early member of United States Digital Service and is a lifelong tech entrepreneur. Chris is a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center, working with Secretary Ash Carter on ensuring new technology serves a public purpose and good. Chris also is a regular lecturer at Stanford's computer science department, encouraging nerds to serve in government.

Emily Tavoulareas is a technologist with expertise in service design, modernization, and organizational change. In her career she has been a product manager, service designer, user researcher, program designer, and advisor to senior executives transforming the products, services, and/or organizations they run. In every role she translates a deep understanding of human and organizational needs into viable solutions.

From 2013-2018 she worked to modernize the way the federal government delivers services to the public. From co-founding the first agency-level team of the U.S. Digital Service and modernizing the Veterans application for healthcare, to piloting and scaling the Human-Centered Design methodology and serving as Senior Policy Advisor the U.S. Chief Technology Officer at the White House, she has experienced firsthand what it takes to improve public services.

She is a fellow at Georgetown’s Beeck Center, adjunct professor at Columbia University, and an independent advisor working with leaders across industries.