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Municipalities may be struggling these day
s,
but the news isn’t all bad, thanks to some
conscientious technologists. Leading the
m is
Jennifer Pahlka, founder of Code for Ame
rica,
a next-generation nonprofit that calls o
n
th
e
talents of Silicon Valley programmers an
d
researchers to help solve the problems o
f
America’s increasingly cash-strapped c
ities.
As a fresh-faced Yale graduate in the ea
rl
y
’90s, Pahlka moved to San Francisco to joi
n
a child welfare agency. “I thought I’d work
in
nonprofits all my life,” recalls the 41-year-old
New York native, “but I found them overly
structured and I wasn’t having an impact.”
Being in the Bay Area, she jumped easily to
the video game and technology industries,
and ended up running the annual Game
Developers Conference and the Web 2.0 Expo
for more than a decade. But in 2010, the rise
in
social entrepreneurism and the obvious need
for solutions to municipal budgetary woes
convinced Pahlka to sta
r
t Code for America.
Modeled a er Teach for America, CfA giv
es
20 selected fellows $35,0
0
0 each to spend one
year programming for the public good, specifi
-
cally at the local level. “C
it
ies are used to a ve
ry
long and complicated pr
o
ce
ss for technology,
”
says Pahlka. “We’re inter
e
st
ed in looking at
solutions that don’t take
a
year to develop.”
Fellows create open-sou
r
ce apps that can be
used by officials and citi
ze
ns alike, and in m
or
e
than one city. For example, an app designe
d
to help Bostonians identify snow-cov
ered
manholes that need to be shoveled
ou
t was
later implemented by Honolulu to m
ak
e su
re
its tsunami sirens were in working
o
rd
er
.
CfA’s fellows run the gamut from
r
ecen
t
college grads to seasoned Apple em
pl
oy
e
e
s
,
though recruiting the la er can be
a
ch
a
l
-
lenge. “It’s hard to get tech pros to lo
ok
a
t
government jobs for the usual ince
nt
iv
e
s
,”
says Pahlka. “But a year of service
tu
rn
s
ou
t
to be a good way to give back.”
Local
Network
how jennifer pahlka’s code for
america is transforming the
way ailing cities solve problems
JENNIFER PAHLKA
/
AGE
41 /
FROM
BRONX, N.Y. /
LIVES
IN
SAN FRANCISCO /
PREVIOUS GIG
GENERAL MANAGER &
CO-CHAIR OF WEB 2.0 EXPO AT TECHWEB
78
/
JANUARY 2012
/
HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
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