THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of Communications
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 22, 2013
White House Highlights Open
Government and Civic Hacking “Champions of Change”
WASHINGTON, DC – On Tuesday,
July 23rd, the White House will honor 15 leaders and organizations as open
government and civic hacking “Champions of Change.” As entrepreneurs,
innovators, organizers, and community leaders, these “Champions of Change” have
made a tremendous positive impact by building high-tech tools to help health
workers and disaster-response crews better serve communities; piloting
innovative programs to involve traditionally disengaged communities in local
governance; using new technologies to enhance government transparency and
collaboration; and more.
When presenting his new
management agenda earlier this month, President Obama said, “… We the people
recognize that this government belongs to us, and it’s up to each of us and
every one of us to make it work better…We all have a stake in government
success -- because the government is us.”
The White House Champions of
Change program was created as part of President Obama’s Winning the Future
Initiative. Through this program, the White House highlights individuals,
businesses, and organizations whose extraordinary stories and accomplishments
positively impact our communities.
To watch this event live, visit
www.whitehouse.gov/live at 10:00 am ET on July 23rd. To learn more about the
White House Champions of Change program and nominate a Champion, visit
www.whitehouse.gov/champions.
Steve Spiker, Director of
Research & Technology at the Urban Strategies Council
Moraga, CA
Steve Spiker (Spike) is the
Director of Research & Technology at the Urban Strategies Council, a social
change nonprofit supporting innovation and collaboration based in Oakland for
almost 25 years. He leads the Council’s research, spatial analysis, civic
innovation, open data, and technology efforts. Spike has research experience in
community development, housing, criminology, spatial epidemiology and reentry
issues. He loves data, visualization, GIS and strategic technology
implementation, especially open source tech. Spike is the co-founder of
OpenOakland, a Code for America Brigade and is helping guide government
technology decisions and civic
engagement
in the East Bay. In 2012 Spike was chosen as one of the Next American City
Vanguard class. He is an outspoken supporter of open data and open government
and speaks across the USA about data driven decision making. He also campaigns
to end human trafficking and runs Stealing Beauty Photography.
Travis Laurendine, Founder
and CEO of LA Labs
New Orleans, LA
Travis Laurendine doesn't fit
in the typical bio box any more than his hair fits into the typical hat. As a
serial entrepreneur he has been on the cutting edge of both the web startup and
entertainment industry for nearly 10 years. He launched his first web startup
while an Economics major at Vanderbilt University, where he was also selected
as the first Vanderbilt student with a film to make it in the Nashville Film
Festival. When Hurricane Katrina struck his hometown of New Orleans, he stayed
back in the city and found himself wearing the hats of startup CEO, concert
promoter, restaurant general manager, standup comic, film/video producer and
director, MTV News journalist, band manager/agent, investor, hackathon
organizer, Entrepreneur-In-Residence, and cultural ambassador. Recently, he
founded Louisiana's first hackathon organization, CODEMKRS, which is currently
being transformed into Louisiana's only modern code school. This summer he has
organized hackathons for giant music festivals JazzFest and Bonnaroo and is
currently planning San Francisco's Outside Lands' first hackathon. His official
job is being the founder and CEO of LA Labs, a startup laboratory focused on
the marriage of entertainment and technology that uses New Orleans as the
ultimate creative incubator. He is thankful for his loving family and friends
and the daily inspiration he gets from the great city of New Orleans.
Scott Phillips, Co-Founder
and CEO of Isocentric Networks
Tulsa, OK
Scott Phillips is the
co-founder and CEO of Isocentric Networks, an advanced data center services
company based in Tulsa, OK. He was previously the founder and CEO of a sensor
technology company whose work included a project for NASA for use on a manned
mission to Mars. Scott is also a founding board member of Fab Lab Tulsa, a 21st
Century non-profit community center for innovation, entrepreneurship, and STEM
education through a partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Scott’s current passion lives at the nexus of entrepreneurship, the maker
movement, and civic hacking, three transformative movements that he believes are
democratizing how we live, work and play. According to Scott, it is easy to
understand the impact of civic hacking on government when you view it in three
steps; give citizens transparency, give citizens a voice, then give citizens
ownership.
George Luc, Co-Founder and
CEO of GivePulse
Austin, TX
George
Luc is Co-Founder and CEO of GivePulse, a social network that matches people to
causes and enables nonprofits, companies and affinities to manage volunteers,
list events and track service hours in one central community. GivePulse
launched earlier this year in 2013 and has since tracked over 100K service
hours and mobilized over 5K volunteers in Austin alone. George has a BS and MS
in Computer Science from Virginia Tech with an emphasis in Human Computer
Interaction. He spent much of his early career developing technology for people
with disabilities and has worked with companies like Daylert, IBM, ESO and
HomeAway. He serves as a board member of City of Austin Volunteer &
Service, Austin Convention Center and Visitor’s Bureau, KLRU, Open Door
Preschool, and was a City Commissioner for Austin Mayor’s Committee for People
with Disabilities.
Craig Michael Lie Njie, CEO,
Kismet World Wide Consulting
Mountain View, CA
Mr. Lie Njie is CEO of Kismet
World Wide Consulting, which he founded in 2002. Lie has over 20 years of
professional experience and currently consults world-wide on a variety of
topics including privacy, security, technology design and development,
education, entrepreneurship, management, sales and marketing, and mobile
application development. Lie was given his name as an honorarium for his three
years of service (2005-2008) as a Peace Corps Volunteer in The Gambia, West
Africa, where he designed, deployed, and taught the first two years of The
Gambia's first Bachelor's in Computer Science program at the University of The
Gambia (UTG). Today his program is still successful and sustainable. After
returning from the Peace Corps, Lie recruited and managed a volunteer team to
build and release the free WasteNot iOS app to help people world-wide share
their good ideas for reducing environmental impact. He furthermore helped the
United Nations as a technology consultant and researched and documented the
privacy risks of health and fitness mobile apps.
Christopher Whitaker,
Project Management Consultant at the Smart Chicago Collaborative
Chicago, IL
Christopher Whitaker is a
project management consultant at the Smart Chicago Collaborative, utilizing his
experience in government and community organizing to advance civic innovation
in Chicago. Whitaker also serves as the Chicago Brigade Captain for Code for
America, supporting civic hacking events and teaching a weekly Civic Hacking
101 class. He is a graduate of DePaul University (MPA) and Sam Houston State
University (BA, Political Science). Previously, Whitaker served with the US
Army in Iraq as a mechanized infantryman.
Jessica Klein, Co-Founder of
Rockaway Help
Brooklyn, NY
Together
with a group of journalists and residents, civic hacker and designer Jessica
Klein co-founded “Rockaway Help” in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Rockaway Help
is committed to empowering the community to find solutions for emergency
response, preparedness and rebuilding through hyperlocal open news and the
development of innovative community-designed technologies. As part of the
National Day of Civic Hacking, Jessica lead workshops and hackathons for
designers, engineers and Rockaway Beach, New York residents to identify problems
and prototype design or technology solutions in the devastated coastal
community. Jessica is currently the Creative Lead of the Mozilla Open Badges
project where she promotes openness and creativity in formal and informal
learning environments and develops ways for learners to design their own unique
narrative around their credentials. Jessica created the Hackasaurus project,
the Web X-Ray Goggles and Thimble tools to help teens learn how to code through
hacking. Over the last decade, she has worked at a variety of institutions
dedicated to learning including the Museum of Arts & Design, The Rubin
Museum of Art, The Institute of Play, Startl, The Hive and Sesame Workshop. She
also founded OceanLab NYC, a project which asked parents, teachers and kids in
the NYC community to investigate their urban coastal environment through casual
interaction and play.
Caitria O’Neill, Co-Founder
of Recovers
San Francisco, CA
Caitria O’Neill is a co-founder
of Recovers, a disaster preparedness and recovery technology company in San
Francisco. After a tornado struck her hometown, Monson, MA in 2011, Caitria and
her sister Morgan worked within their community to connect survivors with local
skills and donations. This kind of seat-of-the-pants organizing happens in
every neighborhood, after every storm. The Recovers team has turned the best
practices of many efforts into a user-friendly tech toolkit for risk mitigation
and community response. In less than two years they have helped hundreds of
thousands of people find information, aid, and ways to pitch in. Caitria holds
a BA in Government from Harvard University, FEMA NIMS/ICS certifications, and
was named an Up-and-Coming CEO by Forbes Magazine. Her work has been featured
by CNN Opinion, TED.com, and Bloomberg Businessweek.
Steven Clift, Founder of
E-Democracy
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Steven Clift is @democracy on
Twitter. He launched E-Democracy.org in 1994 and it is the world's first
election information website. His “government by day, citizen by night”
insights were built as leader of the State of Minnesota's first e-government
initiative. He spoke across 30 countries for over a decade from Estonia to
Libya to Mongolia on open government and civic participation to support
non-partisan,
volunteer-powered
efforts for inclusive online local democracy. An Ashoka Fellow, today he is
E-Democracy’s Executive Director. He leads a dedicated team with the
BeNeighbors.org effort to connect all neighbors online (and off) in public life
across race and ethnicity, generations, immigrant and native-born, and more. He
lives with his lovely wife and two children in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Gerrie Schipske,
Councilwoman on the Long Beach City Council
Long Beach City, CA
Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske is
currently serving her second term on the Long Beach City Council. She has
championed open, transparent and accountable local government since she took
office in 2006 by being the first elected official in Long Beach to disclose
their calendar and to communicate daily via blog, email, Facebook and Twitter.
In January 2012, she took public education and transparency efforts one step
further with her “Open Up Long Beach” initiative and website which provide
residents increased access to the city’s every day affairs and documents, and
includes opportunities for residents to “ go behind the scenes” of city
operations. These efforts were lauded in California Forward’s report: The State
of Transparency in California: 2013. Gerrie also brought transparency to the
Medical Board of California on which she serves by initiating the requirement
that members disclose each meeting any contacts they have had with interested
parties. Gerrie earned her JD from Pacific Coast University School of Law, her
MA from George Washington University, her BA from University of California,
Irvine and her RNP from Harbor UCLA Women’s Health Care Nurse Practitioner
Program. She is the author of three books on the history of Long Beach,
California.
Brad Lander, New York City
Council Member
Brooklyn, NY
Brad Lander is a New York City
Council Member representing Brooklyn’s 39th District, and a leader on issues of
affordable housing, livable communities, the environment, and public education.
Named one of “Today's Social Justice Heroes” by The Nation magazine, Lander is
co-chair of the Council’s Progressive Caucus and was one of the first
councilmembers to bring “participatory budgeting” to his district, giving
residents the power to decide which projects to support with their tax dollars.
Prior to serving in the City Council, Brad directed the Pratt Center for
Community Development and the Fifth Avenue Committee, a nationally-recognized
community development organization.
Robert Davis, Co-Founder of
RadSocial
Cooper City, FL
Robert
Davis is a recent marketing graduate from Nova Southeastern University in
Davie, FL. His day job consists of managing a social media consultancy for
small to medium sized businesses, and at night one can find him at the local
maker and hacker spaces around Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Robert is a Code for
America intern alumni ('12) and an avid supporter of creating civic tools with
open data for the public good. Along with fellow Floridian Cristina Solana, the
two created the Florida Bill Tracker, forked from the MinnPost and redeployed
to easily track controversial Florida legislation. Robert is also an avid
traveler and surfer, and hopes to inspire others to change their world
regardless of age or expertise.
Alderman Joe Moore, City of
Chicago, 49th Ward
Chicago, IL
Known as a pioneer for
political reform, governmental transparency and democratic governance, Joe
Moore represents Chicago's 49th Ward, one of the nation's most economically and
racially diverse communities. Moore became the first elected official to bring
"participatory budgeting" to the United States. Each year, Moore
turns over $1 million of his discretionary capital budget to a process of
democratic deliberation and decision-making in which his constituents decide
through direct vote how to allocate his budget. Moore's participatory budgeting
model has since been adopted by four of his Chicago City Council colleagues, as
well as city council members in New York City, San Francisco, and Vallejo,
California.
Anita Brown-Graham, Director
of the Institute for Emerging Issues at NC State University
Raleigh, NC
Anita Brown-Graham is Director
of the Institute for Emerging Issues (IEI) at NC State University, a
think-and-do tank focused on tackling big issues that affect North Carolina’s
future growth and prosperity. From energy, to fiscal modernization, to
improving our systems of higher education, IEI takes the lead in convening
state leaders in business, higher education and government to address these
issues in a comprehensive, long-term way to prepare the state for future
challenges and opportunities. In her role at IEI, Anita led the development of
the Emerging Issues Commons, a first of its kind civic engagement tool – both a
physical space and an online hub that stands to transform how citizens across
the state connect with each other, access information, and take action in the
decades to come. Prior to her leadership at IEI, Anita worked as faculty of the
School of Government at UNC Chapel Hill for 13 years, training communities in
strategic planning to revitalize their distressed rural communities. Her work
inspired both rural and urban communities to work together for a better future
for the state. Anita is a William C. Friday Fellow, American Marshall Fellow,
and Eisenhower Fellow.
Deborah Parker, Tulalip Tribes Vice Chair
Tulalip, WA
Deborah
Parker Tsi-Cy-Altsa (Tulalip/Yaqui) was elected to the Tulalip Tribes Board of
Directors in 2012. As Vice-Chairwoman, Deborah brings to Tulalip leadership
nearly two decades of experience as a policy analyst, program developer,
communications specialist, and committed cultural advocate and volunteer in the
tribal and surrounding communities. Serving as a Legislative Policy Analyst in
the Office of Governmental Affairs for the Tulalip Tribes from 2005-2012,
Deborah engaged in the legislative process on behalf of the Tulalip Tribes by
providing quality analysis of issues most pertinent to the exercise of
sovereignty and tribal governance, with particular emphasis in the areas of
education, finance, taxation, and healthcare. Before joining legislative
affairs Deborah developed two unique outreach and education programs for the
Tulalip Tribes. Young Mothers was a culturally relevant program for teen
mothers, and the Tribal Tobacco Program sought to inspire responsible tobacco
use among tribal members, while acknowledging tobacco’s sacred place in
Indigenous cultures. Prior to her work for the Tulalip Tribes Deborah served as
Director of the Residential Healing School of the Tseil-Waututh Nation in
Canada, and in the Treaty Taskforce Office of the Lummi Nation, where she was
mentored by American Indian leaders such as Joe Delacruz, Billy Frank, Henry
Cagey and Jewell James. As a passionate advocate for improved education for
tribal members, and a belief in the inherent right of all Native Americans to expect
and receive a quality education, one that is free from racial or cultural bias,
Deborah is focused on educational reform, which includes developing curriculum
that is a true reflection of an Indigenous ethics and knowledge system. Deborah
remains committed to education by volunteering her time in the local schools
where her children are enrolled. Deborah graduated from the University of
Washington with a Bachelor of Arts degree in American Ethnic Studies and
Sociology where she distinguished herself as a scholar and a young Indigenous
leader. Deborah lives in Tulalip with her husband Myron Dewey (Paiute/Shoshone)
and their five children.
