16 Coding It Forward Civic Technology Fellowship
We sit down with (Chris Kuang)[https://twitter.com/chris_kuang], (Emily Fong)[https://twitter.com/emolyfong], and (Frankie Devanbu)[https://twitter.com/FrankieDevanbu] of Coding it Forward, a civic technology fellowship program put together by students, for students.<br><br>### Resources and Shoutouts:<br>- [Coding It Forward Website](https://www.codingitforward.com/)<br>- [NYT Piece: Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/magazine/black-mothers-babies-death-maternal-mortality.html)<br><br>##### Music Credit: [Tumbleweeds by Monkey Warhol](http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Monkey_Warhol/Lonely_Hearts_Challenge/Monkey_Warhol_-_Tumbleweeds)
Top Keywords
- civic 0.013
- civic tech 0.010
- fellows 0.010
- tech 0.009
- frankie 0.009
- emily 0.008
- coding forward 0.008
- students 0.008
- work 0.007
- technology 0.006
- coding 0.006
- fellowship 0.005
Transcript
Hello. I'm Ryan Cook, and this is Civic Tech Chat, a podcast about the civic technology movement. We seek to harness the power technology has to improve the delivery of public services to people everywhere. Thank you to each of you for coming on the program today and for taking the time out of your day to do so. Could we go around the table here and have each of you introduce yourselves and tell us a bit about what you do?
Sure. Hi. I'm Frankie Devanbu. I'm a fellow with Coding It Forward. Right now, I'm working at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which is actually part of the one of the National Library of Medicine, which is one of the national institutes of health. I'm a product manager there. I just graduated from Olin College where I studied engineering with human centered design for biomedical and public health.
Hi, folks. My name is Emily Fong. I'm also a digital fellow with the US Census Bureau working under the Census Innovation Labs. My work there involves sort of a lot of different program management things, working with this specific program called the Opportunity Project that seeks to, create cross government collaborations and bridge public private sector. I'm an engineering, fellow by trade, and I've been doing a lot of web development work. I'm a rising senior at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study where I made my own curriculum called eColonial Computing.
And thanks so much, Ryan, for having us. My name is Chris Kwong. I'm a rising junior at Harvard and one of the cofounders of Coding It Forward, which I'm hoping to share a little bit more about. But at a high level is a student led nonprofit looking to bring more talented student technologists into social impact and civic technology. So really excited to have a bunch of incredible fellows, Frankie and Emily included this summer, working across six federal agencies in Washington, DC and really getting their feet wet in the world of civic tech.
Now, beyond the introduction, we have two questions that are recurring on civic tech chat. The first one is, what is your personal why? Essentially, why you get up out of bed in the morning to do what you do? What what is that for each of you?
Hi. Frankie again. Since I started last time, I'll start it again. So I, want to be useful in combating health inequity in The United States. I the degree that I got, I sort of was making choices as I went along to try to build the skills that I would need in order to do that. What I thought was probably the best way to approach and the skills that I needed, that has changed over time. I think I went into a college thinking that I wanted to, to study biomedical engineering. And, you know, throughout my time there, I sort of realized more that, you know, a lot of America's health problems have absolutely nothing to do with medicine, for one. And then, two, that even the problems that are, you know, that I find sort of more stimulating, which are, you know, mostly about social determinants, are not really so obviously solved directly by technology. And so then sort of catered my engineering around human centered design, which at this point is, like, sort of the one thing that I really do then, when it comes to making positive changes. And, yeah. So for me, getting the chance with CODA forward, to act to actually be doing that work of design strategy, user research, in terms of directing, or, you know, participating in a team that works on strategy for some really amazing public resources, has been just a dream.
This is Emily. So I think what motivates me to join Civic Tech is an honest desire to serve. Servant leadership is something that I've embraced ever since I was young. My friends always joke that I grew up as a lovely note, but life beat me down to the end. And, pretty much, like, coming into college, I also sort of took a lot of different paths sort of understanding what I really was passionate about. I knew that I wanted to do something public facing, but I wasn't quite sure what. And, I ended up, you know, taking a bunch of funny, interesting perceived turns into any of, engineering applications. So I was studying computer science, found out that I was pretty good at it, pretty passionate about making it, using it to do stuff that's that was impactful. And have sort of been in and around civic tech in New York City for a little bit. I entered at Civic Hall last semester, and when putting it forward came and knocked on my door, it kinda seemed like the perfect way to continue building my foundation in this almost niche kind of all in this
Yeah. For sure. It's Chris here. And my personal why really stems back to impact as I think a lot of things do in the civic tech world. So confession that I make often is that I'm not a technical person at all. I make the joke that I'm the forward part of coding it forward and that my passion to really do what I'm doing and leading coding forward and helping run the civic digital pathology, it's helping scale scale impact beyond what I can do personally with my skills and my energy, and scaling that across this year, 36 amazing fellows at six different agencies, but then also a network of over 1,500 students across the country who I know have the skills, the drive, and the passion to really use their technology skills to create impact in social and public sector. So I know that there are so many students out there who are looking to make a difference. And if I can be playing my small part in making that a reality, I'd love to be able to do so. And that's what's kept me going for the last year and a half with coding forward.
The other recurring question that Civic Tech Chat likes to delve into is one that seems simple upfront, but everyone kinda has their own little twist to it. But that's the question, what does Civic Tech mean to you? How would each of you answer that question?
Yeah. I'm I was listening to your, podcast from last month, and I forget who exactly said it, but they, were talking about how they thought that civic tech was less about bringing technology to, you know, government and more about bringing, civility to technology. I thought that was so, sweet, and I I kinda feel a little bit the same way. I think, you know, technology is really just and technology and design, which was sort of my focus, are kind of they're just a suite of tool. And there's to me, it's just like the, civic tech is just this amazing opportunity to bring the wonderful, like, and interesting, constraints and opportunities of government, which basically, you know, has to serve everybody. And so inherently has this equity focus, to bring those, that opportunity put together with the the sort of opportunities and skill sets of technology.
For me, I think I actually had a chance to get coffee with Joseph Nelson of represently earlier this summer, and he said something that I thought was just so poignant, which is most problems in government are not necessarily tech problems. They're people problems. So that concept just just kind of redefined the way that I look at civic tech. So I agree with Frankie that technology is really just a toolbox. But I think, what civic tech does is that it enables us to bring sort of the ethos of technology, the idea that things could be different, and that optimism into a space like government that for so long is kind of, you know, either stagnated or, sometimes it makes it's very difficult to try and get things just to be different because of the way that the institution has been run. So bringing that spirit and agent of change into a space like this is what really makes civic tech so dynamic in industry.
I'm gonna echo that sentiment and steal a line that I heard from a gentleman named Jimmy Chen who's been working on access to benefits for low income Americans. And he talks about with his past in, I think, product management in big tech companies that he's really looking to with Civic Tech to bring the playbook of Silicon Valley and of innovation to government services and making government services more effective and more equitable for all Americans. And I think at the end of the day, it's how do we make government work better. There are debates every day about how much government we should have, but at the end of the day, what we have we're working with what we have, and we wanna make sure that every American, regardless of where they are around the country, where they are in life, has the ability to engage seamlessly and effectively with their government, whether it's applying for federal student loans, trying to access health care, understanding what college opportunities might be out there in terms of comparing different universities. I think that the government through technology has an immense power and immense reach to make that process just so much smoother for everyone. And civic tech at its heart is bringing people with these fantastic skills into make that change happen.
And on that note, let's go ahead and shift gears here from these introductory questions over to the main subject in hand, coding it forward. Chris, could you get us started with that by giving us the sort of elevator pitch for coding it forward for folks that maybe aren't as well versed in your organization?
We started coding it forward in January 2017, so we recently just hit a year and a half, which has been very exciting for us. With the mission to inspire and empower young people and students with technology skills, we use those skills to create social impact. And we identified sectors like health care, education, nonprofit, obviously, public sector as opportunities and fields where technology talent had been overlooked for far too long and as a result had problems that were and had technology that were years, if not decades, behind, the private sector. And as students ourselves at Harvard at the time, but hearing stories on our campus and across the country of students really looking to create an impact with with these fantastic skills that we were learning, we wanted to create first a network of like minded socially impact, technologists from across the country, bring them together, and say that our generation is one that is very passionate about creating change. And we did a lot of storytelling about various people who had made careers and made impact in the public sector, and we felt after a while, we're thinking about how can we, as students, get more involved ourselves. And we realized that there weren't fantastic opportunities to do so as students just coming out of school. A lot of the organizations that we looked up to, the US Digital Service, the Presidential Innovation Fellows, eighteen f, We're all really looking for more experienced technologists. And as students, that left us with not great on ramps. And we looked at USA Jobs looking for civic tech internships, finding only IT assistant positions that were unpaid or jobs installing Microsoft SharePoint. And we figured for computer science and design and then product students from across the country that really was not going to cut it. So we're lucky enough to get connected to a former presidential innovation fellow at US Census Bureau who Jeff Meisel, who had a vision for helping build the talent pipeline into the federal government. And as such, we launched, the Civic Digital Fellowship program, which is a data science and tech internship program partnered with federal agencies. And we had an inaugural cohort last summer of 14 students at the Census Bureau. And this summer, really lucky to have Frankie, Emily, and 34 other fellows across six agencies. So starting to build in the first steps of a pipeline, and that's what we've been working on. And we're really proud of the fact that this is an effort built for students by students in keeping us really at the heart of the mission that we're trying to accomplish.
You know, I have to say I can I can definitely understand being motivated by a desire to avoid installing SharePoint? As far as I'm aware, there have been entire careers spent trying to avoid that very same thing, so I can certainly get that. I have to say though also that, it sounds like you've had some pretty incredible growth just in just one year like that, and that is pretty tremendous. Emily and Frankie, I would be curious. Could you tell us a bit about your story as far as how you ended up getting involved as a fellow yourselves in coding it forward?
So I guess I can go first. My yes. I guess, my entrance into civic tech is really closely tied to my academic trajectory. I spent a lot of time I well, I first of all, I was very fortunate to be in a program where they really encourage you to sort of get out and figure out what you love by yourself. So that process of of being a student at NYU's Galaxy schools drove me to keep trying things. And I knew from the beginning that I was interested in service. I was interested in technology, and I was interested in social equity. And from that point, I kind of just started, looking at what opportunities will allow me to do that. So I remember really clearly, like, when I was still working or interning at. Like, I was still googling, like, companies that are in civic tech and just trying to find out, like, what kind of players are in the space, like, who should I reach out to if I had questions, and, of course, if I had many questions. And I eventually, ended up finding the home page for NAVA PBC, and just sort of looking at the work that they're doing with healthcare.gov and, all the other amazing projects they've been contracted to work on with government. I thought, wow. This is really a space that is so interesting to me that really jives with my personal mission. And I gotta figure out a way to talk to these people. So I just called and emailed them and was like, hey. Do you guys have internships? And, the answer was no. But I managed to connect with Malalam, who is the director of talent acquisition there. And he, was so kind about it, and he was like, hey. Actually, it's really cool that you're interested. We don't have internships right now, but have you heard of this thing called the Civic Digital Fellowship? That's how I ended up, you know, hopping on a twenty minute phone call with Chris to talk about it and really sort of setting the gears in motion to really, to to getting to Washington DC this summer and doing the work that I've been doing. So I really have to thank a lot of people who've opened doors for me, and it's tomorrow one of Chris' favorite phrases, other people open the door. It's just our job for us to do.
Yeah. I I think, so I was sort of nearing graduation, and I, like, Emily, like, knew that it was really important to me that I was able to service. That's, like, probably like, be of service to health equity. That's, like, my like I said, that's, like, my why. So, I was, you know, like, really sort of working hard to look around to try to see, like, are there companies that are sort of doing work in equity? Yes. Are there companies doing work, in health equity that's, like, specifically sort of about, women's reproductive health because that's an area that I said yes. And, like, are there companies that are doing that, in a human centered design way and that are interested in hiring engineers? Like, basically, no. At least out of my area, I was really struggling to sort of find things that were going to allow me to use the skills that I felt like were, really important and and to actually apply them to things that I also thought were important. And somehow it just it didn't even occur to me to be thinking about civic tech. I think, it's embarrassing, but I think it really until getting to DC this summer, I kind of didn't really have an image of the federal government that wasn't, like, politics. And it wasn't, like, our president and it wasn't congress. And so, I kind of, like, just saw an email on, like, one of my school, like, public email message boards that just said, like, you know, you you should check about this thing or maybe apply to it. And I, yeah. So I applied to it really quickly. I actually sort of on a whim over run or break, and then it kinda went from there. I really I don't I think I really didn't ever thought of myself in civic tech. But, you know, it's like, for a lot of reasons, it's sort of a well, just like a perfect, confluence of of my interest. Just one that I.
And we're very happy they both applied. They've been fantastic additions to the cohort, the community. And based on everything we've heard from the folks at NIH and the team at Census, just fantastic in in training. We're very lucky to have them as part of our fellowship this summer.
Yeah. It's, certainly sounding like it's been a a positive experience for all parties thus far. Now I do have a couple of questions that are related. And to give context, I was given, like, a short little blurb of a bio for, both of you, Emily and Frankie. And, a couple of things, like, stuck out to me that I wanted to maybe get a little bit more from from each of you. Emily, in your bio, there's a line that sticks out that says that you're a developer who aims to decolonize and disrupt traditional computational norms. It sounds like a pretty interesting statement to me. I'd be curious to hear a bit about, like, what that means to you, personally.
Yeah. Absolutely. So that comes from the exploration that I was doing academically with my major, which I mentioned earlier, but I'll say it again. The title is decolonial computing, and it's a combination of computer science, public policy, critical race, feminist, and post colonial theory. The really, really short tagline is that how can we use technology to look at our institution in a new light and reorganize them in a way that benefits more and more people, and really deconstruct the way that we've been thinking about technology, about how it benefits certain groups and not others, and how we can really start creating equitable systems as we work. And so I hope that's, and that's kind of leading into the work that I'm doing. Even in government is just sort of thinking about how technology can really look at these different sectors and really redefine how we've been doing things before and how we can start, making sure that we're targeting marginalized communities and doing work that actually helps them as opposed to just, you know, doing the traditional Silicon Valley thing where you make a $400
machine and hope that works out for somebody.
That that's a really good point. And and, actually, I'm glad to hear that you're focused on on that particular angle. I know, we've had some conversations here on the program before. I I recall one in particular with some folks from Open Savanna that one of the things that is thought about a lot is is how do we reach out to those parts of our community that typically aren't by, the the tech community. As you mentioned, like, instead of doing that $400 juicer. So I I am certainly, I feel great to to hear that that someone like yourself is focused on that. Frankie, in in your bio, it's pointed out that you have a keen focus on health disparities and how they connect with, social inequities. Could you delve into that a bit, for us, for the audience?
Yeah. For sure. You know, I could just go on and on about this. Yeah. I was lucky enough to take some some actually, my last year to take, some public health coursework at Allesley College out of the women and gender today, which I absolutely love. And I think, I I don't think I really had been introduced to the fact that, health, you know, America's health is, like, so much broader than America's medical system. I think, we often were thinking about health, think about, medicine and genetics and that kind of thing when really, like, the vast majority of what keeps us healthy or what creates health disparities in The United States is not about medicine, and it's not even about access to medicine. And it turns out that if we I mean, I'm particularly interested in women in reproductive health, especially, like, maternal and infant, care and health. And it just turns out that especially in those groups, the things that create the vast inequity that we have in The United States between, for instance, black women, mothers, and white women mothers, or, their infants and their and the disparities in their infant's health, it doesn't eve it it doesn't even have to do it doesn't have to do with the I mean, it does, but it's not as simple as looking at medical care that they're receiving or looking at their behaviors. In fact, it has very to do with their behavior. And in fact, it even has little to do with, their economic status, although their economic status and and sort of racism in racism in The United States are very tied together. But it turns out even if you control, for instance, for, education level and income, that disparity doesn't go away, in infant and maternal mortality groups. So then the sort of questions that we really have to ask are, or at least the questions that I'm interested in asking in future in my career, and I'm trying to set myself up to be able to ask those questions are, you know, how can we actually combat institutional racism and institutional sexism, with technology and design? And for me, the tools that sort of I believe in that I, want to be using to do that, is human centered design, which to me is fundamentally the same thing as democracy. And that's really just about, you know, bringing more people and more different types of people into the design systems that, you know, that America is built up. And like Emily's saying, that's not just about you know, it's it's about, like, structuring the way that we design the system.
Yes. And and, actually, what you're saying, it it makes me think of I I had read a piece, I think, earlier this year. I I wanna say it was the New York, possibly the New York Times put it together, but I'll get a link for the listener once I remember where it's at. But, in case you do, we're essentially, like, what they were looking at was, a pregnancy and infant mortality rates and how that there was an impact by, just being an African American had on, like, then the health of the pregnancy and the child. Even as you were mentioning, like, controlling for things like income, education, and location, like, that that effect was still there assuming to imply that just the experience of being an African American in America has a negative impact on those things. I don't know if that's a piece you've come across yourself before, but, it certainly seems to speak to the well, what you're describing.
For me, for instance, like, I I remember, I spent some of the semester writing or a lot my last semester in school writing a, paper about parental leave and, like, the ways in which people do and don't in The United States have access to make choices about the way that they want to be their babies. And I know when I was writing that paper, one of the main resources that I used to find information was PubMed. So and for me, even though in some ways working at, you know, a library can seem sort of further, like, and feel, a little bit, you know, separated from the types of equity work that I really wanna be digging into, you know, later in my career. But obviously, I'm very young. There's a lot of things that I still don't know. But to be able to be working on PubMed, which actually, you know, here I am, like, a mixed race person, studying and trying to, write things that are gonna be useful to people like me to be able to to use a tool like that. And then now we actually be working on the design of those tools is actually, is is really huge, and that is all because of moving it forward. Oh, and to just be a little clear, PubMed is one of the tools that the National Center for Biotechnology, runs and works on and one of the tools that I've gotten to interact with, during the fellowship.
So now, I'd like to kinda transition to an open question for the group. Since, as I'm aware, all three of you have at some point, gone through fellowship. And that question is, like, what is a day in the life of a fellow like?
Yeah. This is kind of like a cute question. I feel like our lives are, like, really, they're really at least I I can only speak for myself, but, like, our lives and interaction with the fellowship have been sort of really cheery. It's a suite sort of supports us then to have sort of 40, like, enthusiastic, like minded young people, posting on our, you know, Slack channel every day, like, I'm going to this museum. Do you wanna come with me? Like, sort of an endless barrage of, like, fun things to do. Yeah. So I like to wake up pretty early, and then I go to work really early so that I can leave pretty early. You know, NCBI is sort of unique because unlike what a lot of the fellows are doing, they're like, civic technology is not new to them. They've been building software tools for the last thirty years. So I think I have sort of slightly more of an intern role, there than a lot of the fellows have at their positions. And that's not to say that I'm not doing useful work. Just, I'm fitting I'm fitting into a system that's sort of already running. So I you know, what I've been doing at work is maybe, participating in interviews, reaching out to people to talk to. I'm trying to write up design strategy for looking at survey results. And then I will come back, and there'll be, like, some fun group of people going to some museum, and I get to go do that with them. So it's really kind of a fun tour.
I would say from what I've heard of Frankie work Frankie's work, it's been really impactful and interesting. So, but, yeah, I mean, I will definitely second the really interesting social dynamics of this fellowship. So I think it's the first time really that I've been in a group, one that is so incredibly diverse in experience and viewpoints, in a text based look like this, and also just one that's, kind of on the same page on stuff. I mean, like, civic technology is new to a lot of fellows, but it's something that I'm sure majority of us have become very, very passionate about over the support of some, as as far as work goes, my team is a little bit interesting. The opportunity project is primarily remote distributed. So while a lot of my peers at the census are sort of doing really cool work at nine to five at, the census in. Like, I have the opportunity to sort of go out and sit on meetings with federal agency partners, talk to our private sector partners. We just got off a call with a couple game development companies, that are that we might work with with the upcoming opportunity project sprints. We are working a lot with develop, other designers and product fellows to, revamp the opportunity project website. So in terms of things that I'm doing day to day work wise, I get pretty much a healthy mix of a lot of different things, and I think that's been a really awesome and engaging experience for me. And I think one piece that
I loved being a fellow last summer and I hope has carried on to be really impactful for the fellows this summer is some of the exposure that we try to give, fellows to other parts of the civic tech community. And I think you've heard both Frankie and Emily talk about how they've really dove right into the great work that their teams are doing and are experiencing that forty hours a week over the course of summer and really getting adapt and creating impact, for many people is that also thinking about outside the four walls of their respective agencies, what other good work is being done both inside government and adjacent to. So once a week, maybe a little more often, we'll expose fellows to other civic tech groups. We visited with AT and f, the presidential innovation fellows, just this afternoon. Came from speaking with a panel and a great group of people over at the US Digital Service. Also on the outside, groups like Mapbox and Tech Congress. We're all doing fascinating work here, and half of what we try to do is show the fellows that there's so many opportunities and pathways to create change that they might not have been aware of coming into DC. I know I certainly wasn't when I was a fellow last summer and was really lucky to have certain people say this is someone you should really meet. And I think having met those people, having heard their stories and heard stories of the impact that they've created through technology, showing showing the Civic Digital fellas and continuing to open those doors and facilitate introductions. And we've been really honored and felt really welcome to be in this community that Matt Cutts of USDS calls the innovation fam. And when he welcomed us into that with open arms at an event earlier this summer, it really was a fantastic feeling. And now that a day in the life is, like Ricky said, it's a really fun place to be, when you're young over the summer with a community of like minded fellows and really community greater than the fellowship as well, I think. I hope I speak for a lot of the fellows in that last summer. I felt part of a greater movement and a greater cause that is civic tech.
In a related vein, as you know, we're talking about what your day is like, as as each of you had gone through your fellowships, what would be the thing that surprised you the most along the way and the thing that surprised you the least?
I guess what surprised me the most is really just how different the environment was pretty much, any sort of tech environment. Like, if you're coming from, a technologist background, it's it was crazy to me that there are a lot of tools that I used to use for whatever security reasons, or anything else like that. Like, I remember for most of the summer, my teammates and I were, hotspotting the Internet off of our phones because we had software and files on our personal laptops that we wanted to use, but couldn't access via secured Wi Fi in the building. So we were we had to figure out a way around it to make sure that we actually got our work done. So I think that's that experience is not anything that really anyone can really prepare you for, but it really forces you to be like, well, I have an objective. I need to accomplish it, and I'm going to be creative and adaptable as much as I can in this comfortable space. What definitely didn't surprise me was just the amount of bureaucracy that we were facing. I mean, I think to some degree, everyone expects to have to really advocate for themselves and push, anything, even a small gift change through different, you know, hierarchies of people. But I think in of itself, that's been really rewarding because you get the opportunity to learn not just, how to build on your technical foundation, but how to really manage people, advocate for yourself, like, communicate with a lot of different stakeholders. And I think that in of itself, that those kinds of skills have become really invaluable to me in my day to day, and that's something that, well, I kind of expected to have to deal with. I wasn't expecting to really get to know that side of government that well.
If if I might ask a follow-up on that, what I'm hearing there is that it sounds like what you've been experiencing is kind of like that idea of having to, like, go out and get buy in, for those sorts of changes. Could you talk a bit about, like, your like, what your experience has been like, I guess, in figuring that out, especially kind of having to do it from scratch like that as opposed to coming from a government background already. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of it is just sort of understanding relationships with you, your team, and the people who are, governing different aspects of.
Definitely shout out here to my mentors, Drew, Zachary, and Mara Abrams. They have been amazing advocates for us. Anytime we need to get, like, a GitHub pull request through or small changes that need to be approved by certain people, they have always been on top of making sure that we are talking to the right folks. And so, yeah, you do have to necessarily get buy in from different, I think, stakeholders in terms of the fact that, like, there are just a lot of different people doing a ton of different functions. So if you really wanna push product for you, you have to think about communicating with all those people. I think to some degree, other fellows have had, more, I guess, direct experience in that than I have, but it's it's been interesting and I think rewarding to have to understand the the politics of buy in. And I think that's something that's going to serve me really well no matter what career I pursue.
I felt like it was all surprise. I really went into it having, like, no image for what this, like, little piece of the NIH that I never heard of before, how that would function or what that would even look like. I really have no idea. And I would say one of the things that was surprised was how, my my dad, worked in the private sector for a long time and then, transitioned into being a fusion professor at UC Davis. And I think the something that he always tells me when he first arrived working at, UC Davis Davis with all these people that were, you know, now, working for the state of California was, like, where are the cynics? He was just so surprised moving to the public sector to to meet all these people and sort of see how, like, sincere they were. And that's not to say that I expected people to be, you know, rude or something, but it's it's really just wild how, how, like, lovely and generous and kind, and how sort of sincere and sweet the motivations of most people that work in NIH are. It's just it's I think it's really special to be surrounded by so many people that are really, like, really actually just trying to get a service and really actually, you know, trying to do people to serve, really. It's really a special thing. And then the other surprise was just I mean, it's just such a treat to get to school so that I actually studied in school. And I I I somehow I guess I just didn't really expect to be able to just dive into doing, like, work that I know how to do and I feel confident doing, like, so soon, and especially not in this, like, setting.
I think one thing that surprised me, Ryan, when I got to DC last summer is that we were really grateful that Jeff Meisel has since started taking a chance on what at that point was a couple of college kids in a dorm room who had a whiff of an idea and to see if we can make something happen. And we came to DC thinking that we would have to pitch and sell our way into new agencies and convince them of the value of building a talent pipeline for young technologists. And I'm just blown away by the support that we received, not just from the civic tech community, but from folks at all levels of bureaucracy all across the federal government who are really invested in the work that we're doing and really made it possible for us to grow in the Department of Health and Human Services where chief technology officer Ed Simcox is really our fantastic champion in that building. And I think that was really surprising is that for us, the work that we had done and the things that we've been thinking about that we saw solved the very concrete need for students also were resonating within the walls of federal agencies here because I think at the end of the day, as agencies are thinking about their digital needs and their talent strategy, we like to say who better to build the future of government technology than those who grew up around technology, digital names in a sense. And I think what Emily mentioned about me just having to work really hard to understand the landscape and the systems that are unique to government, I think when we look for the talent that comes in, we don't just look for technical expertise, whether that's engineering or design or product or anything between. We're also looking for people who have a true sense of hustle, a true sense of mission. And that's really what kicks in when the going gets tough. It's not how it's not the grade that you got in your computer science class. It's how well you've dealt with adversity in the past, how you've overcome. And I think for me this summer, not being a fellow, but seeing all of the hurdles that the fellows have surmounted, all of the roadblocks that they've navigated around to create really great impact. We knew we were screening for these skills, but I think still very pleasantly surprised by how effective they have been. And they're civic digital fellows, but we effective they have been. And they're civic digital fellows, but we also like to think of them as bureaucracy hackers
in their own way. So one thing I think I'm I think I'm hearing from you there is, in a way, this, fellowship or internship is a bit of a knowledge exchange. It sounds like perhaps like you go there and you're providing those, like, skills, you know, that digital native experience, to the agency. And in return, that agency is kinda helping expose you to that relationship side of government, kind of the how the sausage is made, if you will, for the day to day operations. Am am I hearing you correctly there? Is is that kind of the how that interaction goes?
I think it does go a little bit deeper. And I think it's also important to know that the fellows and Coding and Ford, we're not coming in to these agencies as the only people who understand technology. As Frankie mentioned, there have been people who have been doing good work in technology and government for a long time. We know as long as technology has been around and a lot of the technologies that we're using today came out of a government lab, somewhere across this country. And so it's not necessarily that our fellows are the tech saviors for any of these agencies. We're really just here to expose the students, and the students are really trying to get that first experience of what it's like to work in government. And I think one thing that we could not be more grateful for as the organization that puts on the fellowship is the partnership, the support, the mentorship, the guidance that the supervisors that work with our fellows day in and day out part upon students who are really early on in their careers. So I think the knowledge transfer immerse students, not just in the forty hours a week at their agency, but also in the community that we've touched on in the site visits and the professional development that we've touched on. And I think it's really important for technologists and civic tech to not think of technologists riding in kind of to save the day, but just to be just another another pair of hands on the team all working towards a common mission. And I think we're really grateful for the people that supported our fellows in helping us play a small part in that.
I really like your use of the the word immersion to describe that. That that seems rather keen as a descriptor. Now from the sound of it so far, it seems like you've all had pretty positive experiences, taking the dive into civic tech and all that comes with it. So as a question kinda for each of us at the table here, having had that experience, if you could speculate, what do you think your involvement in civic tech is gonna look like, here in the future? I'll answer this one.
So we're hoping that I can stay on. And by we, I mean, me and the people that I'm working with at NCBI. I'm gonna be, extending my fellowship for another month and hopefully using that time to negotiate, staying on full time after that. So for me, it's been just, you know, really a joy of finding a place where I I feel like I can actually have, you know, impact on my level and also, learn a lot of the things that I wanna learn in order to be able to move forward, make the kind of impact that I wanna have. And then, another project that I'm working on that, you know, I just wanna shout out to, I'm one of the designers, along with Liam Graceblood, working on a project called Co, which is a, web platform for democratic consensus building and document building. So, really a tool to, take the process of building, of not just voting on legislation, but of maybe building legislation or, and turn that into a democratic, process, you know, that really asks its constituents for ideas. And, obviously, we're starting at a very small scale, you know, thinking about things like single documents or coop, you know, coop bylaws. But it's really another way that, I'm interested, you know, not only in, like, the work of NCBI to, take this incredible wealth of scientific information that's generated, in part by US funding and make it available to people, but also to be asking people for their ideas. And that's kind of where co evolved in. So with with those two projects, for me, that's, like, kind of what the landscape looks like moving forward.
For me, I mean, I'm sort of almost in a similar position to Frankie where I'm also extending my fellowship with the AppSheet Project team for a little bit. Again, nothing's finalized just yet, but I'm excited to keep pushing on these sprints and, you know, really making that cross reference collaboration and that change happen. Beyond that, I'm, I mean, I'm originally from San Francisco, and I go to school in New York. And New York City has kind of become a second home to me. I'm really interested in sort of looking at, you know, those two cities in particular have such a great culture of city innovation. And I would love to be able to bring what I've learned here back to my communities, either in in New York City or in San Francisco and really, devote a lot of time to learning about innovation at a more local level. Because I think, you know, people say this about political change. The most impact you have is on a local level. I think it's very similar and very much the same technology as well. Just kind of beyond that, if we're also thinking about five projects, there are a couple other fellows and I working on initiatives to continue building out the pipeline that Chris, Athena, and the other amazing folks like Sunny Ford started. So we sort of saw that there was a gap between university level, people who are still in school. Like, we have this program, and then there's 18 f and USGS. And there's not necessarily a lot of wiggle room for people in between who maybe just graduated college and are looking for their first job or are trying to find different opportunities, in civic technology or civic technology and so, and and I are sort of looking at ways in which we can either start, different communities that would bring those opportunities directly to, new grads, career changers, anyone who's interested who's interested in entering school tech, and, eventually, moving into, a more advocacy role and starting to think about how we can push for those, programs as apprenticeships as internships really start happening. So we're looking with an eye to the future on how not only can we enter this field, but how we can bring other people with us to really, you know, to go back to, like, really start bringing in the, know how to do this work and wanna do this work, into the next generation of, government.
I think thinking about the future is something that I haven't been always the best at. I'm very, short term type of person, but I think looking in the future, I'm really optimistic by the energy that our generation has shown in terms of their propensity and their willingness to step up and serve. And just this year, we had close to 900 students from a 175 colleges and universities across the country in 38 states raised their hands to say, Pacific Digital Fellowship looks like something that I'd like to do. And they tossed their hat in the ring, and they applied. And we ended up with a fantastic group of 36 fellows, but that also leave leaves over, let's say, 850 who wanted a first opportunity in big tech, but couldn't really have, be given that opportunity just because our program is so new and this field is so new in a sense. So I'm really optimistic in that there's also interest from the agency side. We show the calls from over a dozen agencies that are interested in hosting fellows because they see the value that people like Frankie and Emily bring day in and day out. And so I think in looking to the future, our job at Coding It Forward is to continue working until supply and demand equalize. And we have everyone who's looking for a civic tech opportunity, whether at the state, federal, local levels can find one, that everyone who's looking for great talent is paired with that great talent. And I think in doing so, what we're trying to do at Coding It Forward with the fellowship and everything else that we do on our blog and in our mailing list is try to raise the prestige of being in civic tech. And to draw a parallel that I use frequently is that our nation's top law students all seek to serve the public good as clerks for the Supreme Court. And if that's the case, why can't the same be true for technologists and civic tech? And I think building a pipeline, building awareness, building prestige, all to create more opportunities is really what I'm dedicating my time to doing looking forward and what coding it forward is really looking to do as we continue on in our journey as a young, scrappy organization.
Now, Chris, related to that whole raising your hand and applying thing. So, Chris, let's say if there are folks out there that have listened to what we've talked about so far, and they're interested in either supporting your mission or they themselves would like to apply to become a fellow. How might folks go about doing either of those things?
For sure. We're pretty easy to find online, on the interweb. So feel free to kind of visit us and read more at codename@4.com. My email is also not very hard to find at all. It's chris@codenameat4.com. If people are looking to donate, we would be really, really humbled and honored to receive, your support, the submission that we've been pushing through as or taking classes and doing all the other things that college students do, but one that we. And if they're interested in applying, our application is likely gonna go up, towards the end of this year. And at the bottom of our website, they they'll be able to subscribe to our newsletter. You can follow us on Twitter. We're very active. A lot of what our fellows have been doing this summer and exploring the civic tech scene is all at coding it forward on Twitter. And so please do feel free to reach out if anything that we've said has been interesting and or thought provoking. I'll also let Frankie and Emily share a little bit about how to find them because they're two awesome people as well.
Also, just to jump in on that, for other students that are interested in entering the civic tech space, Emily just posted a blog on the Coding It Forward page that has a lot of sort of good information on who to follow to sort of start, thinking about, you know, what work there is going on. So anytime we'd recommend going through coding it before we find that, article by Emily. Thank you.
And while you're on the coding for blog, there is a really great interview with Franky Day and Boop and they have great blood on their project, which I truly recommend checking out. Very interesting.
Thank you. Oh, look it up. Yeah. Tim Hortons.
But you can find me on Twitter. My handle is Emily Fong, but instead of an I, it's an o. So it's like Emily Fong. I know it's a long story, but, I'm very present there. You can also find me on LinkedIn. Or if you're interested in shooting me an email, you can do that at emily.fong@nyu.com.
I think every all of my, like, social media platforms are all linked to my full name, which is Branson Stavambu. Davambu is called d e d a n d u. So I think if you just Google me my LinkedIn and my website, probably my Twitter, probably like, everything will come up. And, oh, yeah. My email is, fdavendu,devandu,@gmail.com.
Cool. Yeah. I I don't know how folks could say no. This is a fantastic mission to support, and there's clearly a whole, like, chain of links you can click that will take you to a good place to do that. So, you know, I don't know how someone could say no. It it seems too easy. Now as always on civic tech chat, we give the panelists the opportunity to leave us with what they want us to have as far as concluding thoughts go. So can we go around the table and kinda monologue for a bit on what we should leave this episode thinking?
Sure. So I guess I haven't asked for anybody listening, and it's that if you know students or have students in your life or, you know, are thinking about how to build a pipeline whether in your organization, or beyond that, please, please just reach out and mentor them. Literally, nothing makes, like, college students more excited than when people, like, take an interest in their lives and are like, hey. I'm interested in your professional development, and I wanna be here for you. That helps us so much in general and especially in a field as new as civic tech really tends to get people excited. So, in thinking about how I can stretch my impact beyond just doing the work that I do, I'm also interested in sort of, you know, trying as much as possible to really help keep growing, and to really build a nationwide culture of civic innovation, which I think is something that some some, countries have, you know, started doing, and I think The United States is in a great position to start doing this.
I guess for me, the thing to close out on is I just I mean, as myself with myself and as as an example, I think there are a lot of, like Emily said, like, a lot of students out there who, you know, who wanna be of service and who want to, be participating in in making the world better, but who don't have any idea what that might look like down doing that in civic tech or in government at all. And I think sometimes our reputation our generation gets a little bit of a reputation for being a little bit of a challenge. You know, and especially technologists maybe as people that are, you know, with city or not that interested in in impact. But I think, you know, from, you know, this cohort and definitely even my friends at school, like, that's definitely not true. And also, like, I know, like, I didn't I didn't even think this was an option. So just, like, the work that Chris is doing and, I think so many sort of other cool things that are starting to pop up. Like like, the doing the work of reaching out to the students and making sure that there is a place for them to go is just actually huge and really, I think it's a lot
Yeah. And then some thoughts that I've been thinking about, it's been a really interesting time to be growing a civic tech nonprofit, and I think a lot of students at Harvard where I am are really excited by entrepreneurship. And I think it's a really fascinating space to be in for me and the cutting it forward team. So my would not be here without, and it's been fantastic people to have, side by side in the fight. It's been the balance that we've tried to strike between running kind of a very scrappy startup, but one that's a nonprofit, and then one that's working with the government. It's not kinda your traditional college startup in a sense. And for us, it's been a really fun journey to to run down. We've had the support of a lot of people in the civic tech space, obviously, student energy that Frankie touched on, and also support from some really great foundation. So I just wanted to recognize several, Knight Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Vision New America Foundation for being really supporters and believers in the work that we're doing. And it's hard sometimes to take a bet on a college student and or a group of college students, and we're really appreciative that they've believed in us and have helped us get to where we wanna go with building a generation of digital leaders. So we're really excited to be doing the work that we're doing, and we're excited for what's to come.
And thank you to each of you for taking the time to be on the program today. It has been an absolute pleasure getting to hear about your experiences through this fellowship program and how they have kind of helped shape how you're learning and developing for the years to come. And I know there's gonna be folks out there in the audience that are gonna listen to this and take an interest in coding it forward based on what they've heard today. So definitely, thank you for letting us highlight that, and thank you for taking the time to be on. Thanks so much. It's been it's been a pleasure. You can follow us on Twitter using the handle at civic tech chat. Visit us on the web at civictech.chat, or subscribe to us for content updates wherever it is you download your podcasts.
