Jennifer Pahlka

Jennifer Pahlka is the author of "Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better" and a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center and the Federation of American Scientists. In 2010, she founded Code for America, a national nonprofit that brings the principles and practices of the digital era to government.

In 2013, Pahlka took a leave of absence from Code for America to serve as U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer in the Obama administration. There, she helped found the United States Digital Service (USDS), which brings world-class technologists and designers to government to improve digital service delivery. She served on the Defense Innovation Board, started by the late Ash Carter, under Presidents Obama and Trump.

At the start of the pandemic, she also co-founded United States Digital Response, which helps government meet the needs of the public with volunteer tech support. Presently, she serves as the organization’s board chair.

Pahlka is the winner of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the David Packard Award, the Oxford Internet Institute’s Technology and Society Award, the National Democratic Institute’s Democracy Award, and was selected by ​Wired​ magazine as one of the people who have most shaped technology and society in the past 25 years. Her 2012 TED Talk, “Coding a Better Government,” has been viewed over one million times. A Yale University graduate, Pahlka holds fellowships with Ashoka, the National Academy of Public Administration, and the Volcker Alliance.