In college I studied International Relations and after I graduated I moved to Peru where I worked for an NGO with a community health worker program. I was set on a career in diplomacy and had even already passed the Foreign Service Officer Test. I then moved to Lima to work for Innovations for Poverty Action, a development policy research group. During my time there I assisted with the evaluation of a text messaging platform to build trust and mitigate conflicts between community members and mining companies. This was the first time I saw firsthand how technology can be used as a social justice tool.
I found this work interesting and rewarding, but moved by the Black Lives Matter movement, I felt called to work on social issues in my own country. This led me to the UChicago Crime Lab where I worked as a Research Manager for three years on evaluations of youth violence prevention programs. I loved this work, especially collaborating with city agencies to make progress on the city’s most pressing challenges. But I also I saw how far behind the public sector is in terms of technology, which motivated me to teach myself coding and audit classes at UChicago and is what ultimately led me to ITP.
I believe that the next technological revolution needs to be in governance. Most questions people ask about technology are about how we can be more efficient, have access to more information, or get to places faster, but these are tools, not ends in themselves. Instead, I think we need to ask: how do we design systems that enable our best humanity? Technology is not capable of building just and equitable social systems on its own. That ability and responsibility is ours.