I am a Digital Service Expert at the U.S. Digital Service at the White House, where we're working to improve the usability and reliability of the most important government digital services and helping to solve some of the national biggest challenges with technology.

I also head up engineering and technology at AMG, a company founded to bring the lessons and innovations from the Obama campaign to the world. Previously, I worked on the second inauguration and the DNC, leading an engineering team building applications to help re-elect the President and Democratic members of Congress.

I am passionate about creating groundbreaking applications, solving tough engineering problems, and helping affect positive change and I've been very privileged to be able to do all three over the last few years. At USDS, we're working with agencies and within the Executive Office of the President (EOP) to implement private-sector best design and technology practices to deliver better services to the American people. I've focused mostly on homeland security projects and government-wide efforts like modern collaboration tools. You can learn more about how the U.S. Digital Service is changing government at usds.gov

I am also a co-founder of AMG and currently serve as acting CTO and VP of Engineering, building a world-class, patent-pending media optimization engine and the tools and infrastructure to support it. I work with an awesome cross disciplinary team of forty engineers, analysts, and media experts. In addition to candidates for Senate, Governor, and mayor, AMG has worked with Fortune 500 companies in entertainment, hospitality, retail, and elsewhere and will optimize more than $60 million in media placements in 2015.

Previously, I led the design and development of the Democratic Party’s super swanky, state-of-the-art application for the reporting and visualization of media spending, polling, field and other critical campaign data for Obama for America, each of the party committees and other federal campaigns. I also worked as a Fellow at the Social Security Administration, redesigning SSA architecture and software using modern technologies in an attempt to increase efficiency and save hundreds of millions of dollars a year (spoiler alert: we had limited success).

I have a Master of Engineering in Computer Science ('10) and a BA in Computer Science and Political Science ('09) from Cornell University, where I survived five years in Siberia. I briefly escaped to Berlin to study abroad at the Freie Universität and Humbolt Universität in 2008.

People apparently are occasionally interested in my thoughts on technology and politics, and I have been quoted in the New York Times, National Journal, Huffington Post, a few times in the Cook Political Report, and some other places where I've lost the links. I have also spoken at Netroots, Rootscamp, and at the Personal Democracy Forum.

In case it's not obvious, three of my big passions are engineering, politics, and policy. On the tech side, I'm happiest when I get to work on the full stack - from product design to schema to backend and frontend application code (mostly Sinatra or Rails nowadays) to data visualization (yay D3.js!) - on applications that dream big. On the policy side, I'm especially interested in freedom of speech and privacy issues online and off and LGBTQ issues.

When I'm not working, I love traveling, skiing, photography, reading, and finding new music and movies to get excited about. At some point, I'd like to learn how to surf properly, get my pilot license/certification, and start playing music again.