 Hello everyone and thank you for joining us today. We know it's summer, but we are so excited to talk about this with the Public Interest Technology University Network folks. Today we're gonna talk about the Tech Congress Innovation Fellowship, which is one of the great programs that tries and aims to have a better understanding of technology within Congress and bring innovation from the bottom up. So today we're gonna hear about some of the students that came out of this or sorry alumni that came out of this fellowship and we're so excited to hear you. Please share any questions that you have over the chat or in the questions app here in the Zoom and we'll make sure to address those but we're hoping that we have a really good conversation and again, thank you for joining us. Let me just quickly introduce Brooke Contra Senior Advisor at Tech Congress because she's gonna take us through the rest of today. Brooke, I'll put it up to you. Thank you so much and thank you all for having us to talk about Tech Congress. So Tech Congress was started in 2015 when Travis Moore, who's the founder of Tech Congress decided to build what he wished he'd had access to when he was a staffer on the Hill. And that was access to tech expertise. At our last review, there were fewer than 20 of 3,500 staffers on the Hill who have tech backgrounds. And that is just an inadequate amount of tech expertise considering all of the things that we are passing legislation about these days. And so Travis decided to start this fellowship program and we send, we have two programs. One is the Congressional Innovation Fellowship and one is the Congressional Innovation Scholars Program. We have people who've gone through both of those programs with us here today. One is for people who have recently graduated from technical degree programs at graduate or doctoral level. And one is for more mid-career technologists who are looking to have this experience and see what it can do for their careers and also just share their experience on the Hill because as I said, it is really important. We are in the middle of a recruitment cycle right now and we have some really exciting news to share which is that we have a funder who has given us some additional funds. So we are expanding recruitment for this upcoming cycle. So normally this would just be the Congressional Innovation Fellowship Program but we are also recruiting for Congressional Innovation Scholars this time. So recent graduates are encouraged to apply this cycle. We are hoping to have, in an ideal world, we would have six fellows and four scholars. So that means lots of slots that we encourage you to apply to be part of. Other good news, we have extended the application deadline by a week. So applications are now due by August the 10th. And if you have any questions about the application process, I'm sure we will share our email contact information. So just get in touch with me or Alina Khan who works with Tech Congress as well and we will answer those questions. One more thing to note, we have a diversity referral award of $500. So if you nominate someone from an underrepresented group in Tech who accepts and joins the program, we will give you $500. So please nominate friends and colleagues and people that you think might be interested in this experience. Another thing I just wanted to say, you do not need policy experience to apply to this program. It's a common misconception. This is part of what we want you to gain from this experience is learning more about policy and you don't expect you to know that coming in. Also, a note on imposter syndrome, imposter syndrome is a real thing that most of our fellows and scholars struggle with. And so please apply if you are interested in this program at all. You may not think that you have checked every single box on this application but you really never know. Please, please just apply. There's no harm in applying and you would be surprised. I would say we're at nearly 100% of alumni who struggled with imposter syndrome at some point during their experience. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to our wonderful alumni who've joined us today to talk to you about their experience. And I'm gonna start with Soham. Hey there, sorry, it was fishing for my mute button there for a second. I'm Soham Pawar. I was a 2020 Congressional Innovation Scholar. Came straight out of grad school at MIT and went to work for Congresswoman Alyssa Slotkin which is actually where I still am and the reason I'm in a suit is because I'm actually in the office today back on the hill. In terms of sort of how I ended up in tech Congress, I was a undergrad at Harvard, was a climate science and environmental engineering nerd and a lot of time looking at ice sheets and power systems. And along the way got interested in cybersecurity. Found my way to grad school at MIT in the technology policy program where I actually got a chance to be a part of a Pitt-U.N. program. So I worked under a guy named Professor Larry Suskin who was fantastic on something called the critical urban infrastructure cybersecurity clinic where basically we were working to do sub-security assessments for the towns of Massachusetts and you know, caught the public interest bug and when the pandemic hit, decided to try and make my way to the hill which is where I still am. And Dr. Crystal Grant, would you introduce yourself? Oh, you're using doctor. Hi, I'm Crystal. I was same as Soham a 2020 Congressional Innovation Scholar. I guess my background, I was an undergrad at Cornell which I understand is like a Pitt with partner school. And I studied like biology major and with like concentration in genetics and always found it really interesting but it was more kind of interesting like the bioinformatics approach like I was never very good at any like classes that involved labs. So after undergrad, I went to graduate school and I got my PhD in genetics with same thing like a bioinformatics focus. So that's where I learned to code and really like got really interested in like these tech tools but also started to get a little bit more interest in policy and just kind of understanding how much like pretty much the tech and like science research that is done in this country is like very interwoven with policy and politics. And so I kind of was hoping to work at that intersection. I didn't know there was such a thing then as like public interest tech or even tech policy. So I was like, oh, I like tech and policy. What can I do? And so after graduate school actually did a short fellowship at the National Academy of Sciences, the Mercian focused on tech policy and that's when I learned about tech Congress and I had always wanted to get a chance to work on the Hill. So yeah, that was kind of my path here and my like interest from my graduate career. I learned a lot about algorithmic bias in the space of like biomedical research and genetics. And I thought this was like an issue in the field of genetics and it was sort of like once I left graduate school realizing like this is a problem and everything that touches tech essentially is having these like embedded biases. And so that's something I was really interested in. In tech Congress, I served in Senator Elizabeth Warren's office where on the time she was on the health committee. So it was a lot of like getting to work at the intersection of like health and tech during my time on the Hill, which was yeah, it was great exactly what I wanted. Thank you. James. Okay, thank you. And James Gimby, I'm actually a graduate from the Rochester Institute of Technology, which I believe is also a PIT affiliated university. So I actually was a member of the 2018 class of the Congressional Innovation Fellowship, which is the mid-career program that's offered through Tech Congress. I worked with Senator Rand Paul on the intersection of essentially technology and fourth amendment and privacy issues primarily. Before that, my background was in cybersecurity. So I actually worked for a company called Mandiant where my job was to eject, detect and inject malicious foreign actors from various networks. So a ton of fun, really fulfilling work, but I always had a little bit of a pull and gravity for public policy. The thing that helped me back was kind of cost, right? Like the idea that in order to pivot as a technologist, you might have to go to law school or you might have to go get an MPP, which sounds really expensive, a lot of opportunity costs, and you don't know whether or not you're actually even gonna get a job or if you're gonna be any good at it. And then Tech Congress came along, kind of a perfect way to see then and see if it fits. So I'm looking forward to talking with you all and I guess that's me. Thank you, James. Frank. Thank you, Brooke. Frank Reyes, I am an FIU alumni, so go Panthers. I served in 2019 as a Congressional Innovation Fellow on the House Committee on Homeland Security. There I served as their tech policy advisor working on cybersecurity, critical infrastructure protection, and essentially any threats to the homeland and national security innovation. Before I came to Tech Congress, I was working at a data engineering firm supporting national security agencies in thermographic data analysis and threat modeling. And what really got me excited about serving in Congress was before that, I served 10 years in the executive branch of the Department of Defense as a federal civilian. And before that, I was an active duty military. And I saw the effects of Congress in the various layers of our governmental systems. And I wanted to be part of seeing how, using my technology background can help affect change in a positive way. And now I'm at Amazon Web Services where I still get to work with our public sector customers, helping them in secure computing. So as James said, I look forward to speaking and hearing your questions. Thank you all. So let's talk a little bit about your life before the fellowship. What originally sparked your interest in technology? Let's start with Crystal. Yeah, wow, it's very nerdy. It was definitely like dataviz for me. It was seeing these really incredible visualizations of, since I'm like a geneticist, of the human genome and of progress we were making and better understanding it and understanding health conditions and just thinking like, this is so cool. I can't wait to learn to have the skills to kind of be able to produce things like this and more complicated tools. So yeah, that's why I always, I try to incorporate a lot of good data visuals for other people like me who see a product and are just like, how can I make something like that? And yeah, I think that's kind of what initially got me excited and I think was kind of kept me around is realizing it's pretty much every level is so much more complex than we think and also the proliferation of tech and how much more societal decision-making that we're handing over to tech kind of like keeps me up at night. So I feel like, yeah, seeing a pretty graph is what got me started and like understanding the larger societal implications that are one of what has kept me going. Awesome. Soham, what originally sparked your interest? It's funny, I have kind of a weird pathway into like the public address tech world because I came in as a climate energy nerd and sort of pivoted to being a cybersecurity nerd. And I think it kind of all goes back to I was a kid in high school during Hurricane Sandy and Irene and I'm from Jersey in case my speech didn't make that obvious but from my perspective, it was kind of seeing like one weather takeout hour for the huge chunk of our state like that and then seeing it brought back on and then years later learning about critical infrastructure cybersecurity and realizing that you could do that with a computer seeing those two things come together and just kind of realizing the extent to which there is so much tech in all its forms from like grid switching equipment to automated controls to like straight up computers that run pipelines as we've seen recently that underlies all the things that we rely on for our day-to-day lives. I think that for me was a huge revelation and like it's funny because that's actually now the exact sort of annexes I get to work on on the hill but I can kind of now looking back and draw the line at the time I had no idea that was sort of all string together. Frank. I would say, oh, wait, Frank. Sorry, I think she said Frank, it's all you. I mean, we can both answer at the same time. Yeah, you can do this. I would say it stems from my systems engineering background, right? As I mentioned earlier, I was in the executive branch and in the private sector and I was a recipient of a lot of policy and so I was the outputs of the system, right? And I wanted to better understand the inputs of the system and kind of work and work to make those outputs better. And so that's where I had heard an info session much like this in person though, that Travis, the co-founder of this program had an event and it just lit a light bulb. I said, I had some of the similar issues that James had of I wanted to get into it but I didn't know how to. And the traditional way of getting into the hill is very different and very challenging. I wasn't at a point in my career that I was willing to start off as an intern and work my way up and there's nothing wrong with that pipeline in that regard, you know, of that but that just wasn't my path. And so tech Congress just spoke to me and I applied and I was fortunate to get, sir. Yep, and then for me, I'll say in terms of getting into technology, the simple answer is I was just always a geek and kind of grabbed on to the stuff earlier, you know, like a lot of us just, well, I'll date myself a little bit but like bypassing JavaScript controls and my friends, GeoCities websites and things like that. So cybersecurity grabbed me early. The interest in public policy didn't really come to college. I had to pick a minor and American politics seemed interesting enough. Sooner or later, I discovered, wow, I really like constitutional law and then wow, I really care about, you know, how Congress is interpreting things like the crypto wars revitalized and et cetera. So I really wanted to find a way to get involved. And, you know, like we've said a couple of times, the traditional routes were just really expensive unless you had planned to do that from an earlier point in your life. Kind of felt like tech Congress was purpose built for me in that moment where it's like, if only there was a way to try Congress out to be seen as an SME and a practitioner but not have to go through the whole law school pipeline. So I guess that was my route. Thanks. So this is just open to everyone. Like, do you have any tips or advice for people that are thinking about applying? Yeah, I'll go ahead and start off this. I guess the first thing like Brooke was saying is go ahead and apply. If you're thinking about it, if you're on the fence, there's no risk, there's no penalty if you apply now and you don't make it. It's not like you can't make it in the future. So you don't have to wait until you're at that perfect sweet spot. Get the applications in. And then the key with the applications is getting proofreaders for your essays. Make sure that you're coming off the way you think you're coming off and make sure that you're finding a way to demonstrate that you can bring a little bit of technical context to an important issue that a traditional staffer might not be able to do. So I would say those are the key things. And that is informed advice because James has helped us as an alumni in reading a lot of applications. So he has seen the volume of things that come in and the importance of just a simple proofread. That is a really important point. And I will also just flag that we at Congress did a session recently all about advice for your application. And that is on our website. So check that out too if you want some more in-depth tips. But anybody else have tips for people? I would say practice being able to explain whatever area of technology you care about to somebody who is not a technologist. So find either if you have a classmate who's studying something totally different that is nowhere in the tech realm, we have family members. If you're able to talk about why you're passionate about it or why it's an issue or how it impacts people in a way that they can understand that will help to James's point of when you start to write your essays because that's a real big issue of there is always a lot of smart people that come to Congress and they have no lack of smart people. It's how can these people effectively communicate at a level that the person that they're talking to understands what the real issues are and understands it quickly and are salient to determine what the appropriate action is forward. So practice that normal. So if you're talking about blockchain or you're talking about ransomware or you're talking about anything else, just practice that. Yeah, Frank took the words out my mouth. I think like the most important thing was, well, he said it better, was like communication on the hill. And it can be things that you think are like even really simple like acronyms. Like I was talking to someone who was planning to apply and she was talking about actually wants to work on AV and I was like, you have to say autonomous vehicles, you can't just say AV, not everyone knows the same acronyms. So I think that's really great advice of find someone who's not a technologist and explain to them and really have them tell you each point that their eyes glaze over and figure out how to explain it or how you would explain it to like a grandparent or something because the just exactly what Frank said of like there would be some times on the hill when we'd be getting a briefing from someone it's very clear that they know what they're talking about but because they're using so much jargon just not giving like real world examples you can tell that what they're like all their expertise is kind of being lost. So just like definitely take the time and make sure that you are just speaking like plain English about whatever tech things is of interest to you. And then also if you aren't a policy person which I like, you're not, you're essentially not like supposed to be for this you're supposed to be a technologist. I would suggest maybe checking out it's called the Journal of Science Policy and Governance and they have it's essentially published by a bunch of like non-policy like early career people who are hoping to transition into the like tech and science policy space and that's a great way to also just be able to kind of like read up what does like a congressional policy memo look like like kind of like how can you lay out like here's the problem in society here's how we could change it here's like the amount of money or time it would save and you kind of want to be able to like just lay things out like very efficiently like that. Crystal, could you repeat the name of that journal? I think a lot of people wanted to look that up. Yeah, the Journal for Science Policy and Governance and I'll drop, I'll drop a link. Thank you. Ken, I can round this out. I think I'll do a huge plus one to what Frank and Crystal said about communication. And then the other thing I'll add is just, you know I coming in and my first sort of heard about tech commerce was like, oh, that's a program for people who do digital things. It's a program for people who do like tech for government. So I would say don't be, you know afraid to sort of pitch your vision of, you know public interest technology ought to be. I came in and Brooke probably remembers I came in here talking about the intersections between climate change and cyber security and grids and data and was sort of like really coming out of left field but, you know, the folks were interested. And so I would say, you know figure out what you're passionate about and then figure out how it fits with this framework because chances are it does. And the other thing I'll add is just, you know don't be afraid to talk about what you don't know. I think one, the thing that I say the most on the Hill is probably I have no idea but we can find that out. Because I think having a healthy sense of humility especially when you're approaching problems the size of the ones that we do here is always really good to healthy thing. And also I think it'll just lead to many more interesting conversations because you can then seek out folks who will, you know, have really, really interesting ideas that, you know, I certainly wouldn't count myself. And I'll just add that the points that Crystal and Frank were making and about being able to explain something to someone who doesn't have a tech background that is one of the core things that we look for in candidates. So, you know, in your application we'll be looking for that in interviews. We will be looking for that and we will ask you questions to try to test that and see how good you are at just explaining something to someone who's not gonna have the kind of tech expertise that you'll have coming in. So let's shift into the placement process and the fellowship itself. So I think a lot of people are curious about how placement works. So why don't, I'm open floor to anyone sort of like how the placement process worked for you. So I can like jump in here. Ours was, I'm a 2020 scholar though, so ours was all remote so I'm not sure how it differs but I think it is basically the same in that like tech congress will like, you know, collect information about us like our resumes and policy interests and use that like leverage their network and send it around to a bunch of offices to kind of just say like who wants like, you know, like free highly skilled labor and like shockingly a lot of offices will respond they do. And in addition, you can like kind of seek out your own like offices that you know that you're interested in. For example, Rep Yvette Clark represents New York City where I'm from and is like also a Caribbean woman and also is very passionate about tech policy. So she was someone who like, I think like, I like went out and reached out to her myself and was like, hey, what can I look for you? And yeah, you kind of set up interviews. Different offices have completely different vibes. We kind of say in the fellowship that it's like, I don't know the exact number like what 500 or something different like individual like companies is kind of what Congress is like because they're also different. So with some it's like, you'll have a phone call and they'll be like, we'd love to have you for the year. And for, I ended up joining Senator Warren's office. It was super intense like several rounds of interviews and like timed writing samples and all kinds of intense things. So there's a very like wide range. And yeah, it's just kind of thinking about, you know, what members are you very excited about and who are working on topics that you're interested in and also have the committee placements like to, for you to be able to like leverage your skills. And yeah, it's just kind of like, like say like speed dating all those sorts, just trying to find the best match and have you pick them and then pick you. Yeah, I think you described the process pretty perfectly. There are a lot of variety in terms of how it works office to office. One of the things that I wanna highlight is that you said about the, well, really the tech Congress community is at this point pretty large and we have fingers all over Congress at this point. So the program is very good at, you know, flagging what offices you'd be a good fit for based off of your interests and finding personal relationships and making that introductory connection as well as, you know, kind of steering you toward opportunities that maybe you didn't think you'd wanna latch on to, but really do underscore the platform that you're trying to build. I think an important consideration is to think through, you know, what you're coming to Congress for to try to pick the shape of what sort of office you wanna land in. There's a lot of differences between a personal office and a committee office or, you know, house versus Senate, minority versus majority, whether you wanna do oversight primarily or primarily legislation. So lots to consider the good news is you don't really have to know the answers to all that now. That's what the program kind of helps you navigate. Yeah, and I'll just echo what James said. I think the ability to sort of chart your own path is something that I personally really enjoyed. So, you know, in my case, I got to be part of the freshman team of a first year office and sort of help grow a policy area of my own. Whereas, you know, some of the other folks in my class and sort of some of the other cohorts that were around when I was there, we're doing everything from your a year long deep dive investigation to, you know, managing a very specific portfolio for their member or their committee. And I think the ability to sort of choose what both fits you on a policy level and sort of your interest level, but also kind of almost just like a personality fit is really important. So, you know, I work in a really fast paced office that gives me a lot of freedom and a lot of sort of responsibility to kind of run with other folks who want a little bit more supervision or, you know, a little bit of a bigger team. So I think there's enough diversity even within Congress that you can sort of always find something that fits kind of both your interest and your sort of purpose. And I think Frank, you did a really good job of trying to select a placement based on some of the things that you were interested in. What did you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so some of you on this call may be mid-career. And for me, I have two young boys, I have a family. I definitely wanted more of a reasonable work life schedule. And that's really hard to come by in the Hill. Everything they say about the Hill that it's fast paced, it's all, it is that I've never worked as hard and as long as I have, aside from the military, here on the Hill. And that is something that you have to know your operating model, how do you work best and communicate that in your placement, right? I chose, as James mentioned, I chose committee because we do more oversight. We are more focusing on good governance. And it does have a lot more structure in it. And that, for me, worked better for it. But if you're like, I want to know how deals are made, I want to know how legislation is written, I want to understand the constituent services, I want to know it all, and I want to go, go, go, then a personal office in the house might be a good fit for you and you want that. You want that, you love that energy. That's what drives you, then yes. And that's a great thing about the placement is that you get to go and meet, there's always more offices that want fellows than there are fellows available. So that is, the numbers are in the favor of you finding an office that will be a great match for you. So tell us about something that you achieved during your fellowship that you're really proud of. I can go for there. And Frank, that was hilarious that you were like, this is the hardest I've ever worked other than the military, like that was very funny. I definitely like plus one to that, like it is, yeah, they are definitely long hours. But something I was really proud to get to come away from the fellowship was that my office was doing tech, but in like mostly kind of like the antitrust space of like breakup big tech, and hadn't really looked at the intersection of tech and health. And I think especially like it was during the early, during the previous administration's handling of like the pandemic and there was a lot of interest in like, I don't know, like health data and data like government governance and privacy. And so it was really cool to get to kind of maybe like work in a personal office that maybe wasn't as established in an area and kind of bring them into that area. And something, yeah, something like I got to do things that I was really excited about. There was essentially like, we found that the CDC like through a statistical error error, we hope maybe it was purposeful, was like severely undercounting COVID mortality risk and like got to like use like the oversight tools to like get the CDC to adjust like how they were making that calculation and improve their like data policies. Or I think maybe the like thing I was the kind of most proud of was like getting like my office to kind of push HHS to examine the severity of like racial bias and like health algorithms. So yeah, just like getting to kind of work at that, get getting to kind of like establish a new area where your like boss hasn't worked before. And now that they can kind of become like a leader on that topic, for me it was like just like a very cool experience to get to see. And yeah, and getting to like call out the CDC and be like, hey, you made a typo and your code is like, yeah, forever like a very cool experience to have. So let me go. Good. Yeah, so as I mentioned that the introduction most of what I focused on was kind of the intersection of privacy and technology in terms of government oversight and all that. I'd say the pieces of work that I got to sink my teeth into that I was most proud of all had to do with oversight for government authorities and that sort of thing. So for example, giving a little bit more teeth and authority for the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which is the executive agency tasked with overseeing the entire intelligence apparatus, which was not able to do any work because of technicalities. Producing a hearing for the applicability of the fourth amendment warrant requirement on your personal device whenever you're at a border. That was pretty fulfilling experience. And also just trying to help government grow their authorities where new authorities were needed without opening doors for potential abuse and issues down the line. So for instance, drones, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security needs authority to take down drones that are considered a threat. But let's just say that their first draft of those authorities are perhaps a little bit more open than you might want if you're a privacy advocate. So working with the agencies to try to tighten those up and give them the authority they need without causing problems down the line. Because that's the summary. I would say I had two things that I was most proud of. One was one thing I learned that I didn't know, I didn't know. And the other thing was being at the ground level of standing up a new federal agency. So as I said, I served in 2019 and just a few months before that the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency was created in law in the December of 2018. And our committee's role was to oversee its stand-up of that agency. And as a tech fellow, my committee empowered me to be the primary person to focus on that. And that's everything from hiring cyber talent to organizing their structures to seeing where they're pulling people from various Department of Homeland Security agencies. As James mentioned, reviewing their new authorities, understanding how their lawyers were interpreting those authorities, right? Because that you start to learn like just because Congress writes something doesn't mean it just magically happens. There's a whole long list of that. Understanding administrative law, how that all flows down. That for me, and it's so ongoing, right? It's, you know, no agency can be out on the ground running within a year or so. But that for me was really, really impactful for me to learn how to stand up a government agency and what it all entails for it. The second part was something I didn't know, right? That I mentioned earlier. I got to sit down and convene, that's one of the great things about Congress, the power to convene, a round table on the cyber gap talent in the pipelines from minority serving institutions. We already know that it's hard for both private sector and the federal government to hire cyber talent. But the question is, why is it that so few of them are coming from the minority serving institutions? And so it was wonderful to be able to bring the presidents of various, you know, historically black colleges, Hispanic serving institutions. From, I mean, I, we had one college that was in rural Louisiana. And I had learned about how this college was stood up from rural farmers who cobbled their little earnings that they had to stand up this historically black college. And why they still aren't getting the attention of major tech companies of the federal government and what ways we could do. I did not even know about this sector at all or this problem issue, but it's a tech issue. It's a tech diversity issue. It's a pipeline issue. It affects us all. And for me, I was really proud that, and I still use that as a story. It's like one of the most things that I still would stick with me was that whole convenient meeting all those people and having them in the room and talking about their issues. That's so cool. I didn't know that was you, Frank. I read about that later and I was like, this is great. I'm glad whatever staffer did this. I didn't realize that was you. That's so cool. I actually only know it because we're on the home edge and we get to like benefit from Frank's great work. I guess I can jump in on that front. I think two things for me, one is just kind of a testament to the power that like one determined nerd can have in Congress. So a phrase that my office mates who are listening and make fun of me a lot for saying is, well actually Congresswoman in my graduate work. And I think as someone who can straight out of grad school, something I did not really realize is the extent to which like the random tidbits of information you've learned along the way can actually become super useful. So super concrete example. In my graduate work, my master's thesis at MIT, I cited this piece of research from one of the national labs about how better connecting the grid saves money and helps fight climate change by reducing emissions. And I was always wondering why there was just not an actual published version of that report for me to find. Turns out I had been suppressed by the last administration. And so I actually got to work with my boss to push the secretary of energy to really suppressed grid research. And the way I pitched it was look, the guy who wrote it was a constituent. And by the way, this is the thing that I worked on in my graduate work. So being able to go from like, I worked on this in school to we did congressional oversight that actually forced the release of a thing was maybe the coolest thing I'll ever do. And then the other thing, speaking of building on Frank's great work. So Frank talked a little bit about CISA, the agency, he sort of helped oversee the standup of. And I had the fascinating experience of being in Congress during sort of one of the biggest cyber attacks we've seen in recent history, which is this ransomware attack on the colonial pipeline. And one of the cool things I got to be a part of was taking legislation that we've been working on for a while to basically expand how CISA's exercises can help state and local governments and private businesses test their own defenses. Taking that from, hey, this is a bill that we tried to introduce all the way through passing the House in the span of just over a month and being able to go through that whole process of working with stakeholders in the district, talking to our state government, talking to committee staff, talking, you know, negotiating with folks in the Senate and then moving it through, you know, getting bipartisan co-sponsors, that whole process all the way through getting passed by the House, I think was an incredible experience. So many great stories. Love these. What is something that surprised you about Congress? Could be any quirky thing, like there aren't enough bathrooms or it's really impossible to tell how to navigate these halls or anything. Yes, all that. No. I feel like half my job is telling people how to exit the building at Russell. Yeah. And half my job was trying to figure out how to exit the building at Russell or longer when you go through the tunnel until you get turned around. And I would say, for me at least, I was surprised at the access and the abundance of information Congress has. Like, I would advise anybody to do tech Congress just for the fact, if you're just genuinely a curious person, you could be a staffer and produce no work and spend your entire lifetime just like learning and absorbing because Congress does not lack the ability to get information from it. Whether it's the amazing resources at the Library of Congress, right? The world's repository of knowledge. Whether it is their teams that they have there. They have super librarians that are not just like, here's how you use the deli decimal system. It's like, I'm an expert in the field that you're asking me about and I will go and, oh, you're interested in the Azure-Brijani conflict of 1942. Hold on. I'll go get the expert. Who knows that person? Like, this is like, there's that. There's all the reports. There's the ability to ask, you know, having a congressional email allows you to send an email to industry, to the executive branch and hopefully the executive branch reaches back but industry tends to be very good at that. It is just amazing how much. Also, when we met in person, they had all these like workshops, webinars, things that were happening on the Hill every day, you know, info sessions that you could just learn. Like I learned about the fabric belt industry, you know, like conveyor belts and how the fact that the lower demand on frozen food is resulting in impact in the conveyor belt trade association's demand in there. It's like, I would have never known that. I don't know why I know that now, but like that was really cool. So the abundance of information really surprised me. One quick thing to tack on that also is, I guess the, I think low number of staffers who actually take advantage of that and how you will stand out immediately if you just use the resources that are there to be used. So one other thing I'll add is that, you know, I was definitely pleasantly surprised at how work actually kind of gets done if you're talking about a wonky issue that doesn't have national attention. You know, most of my work was bipartisan. You know, I worked with Republicans and Democrats on just about everything I touched. And there was a lot of very earnest seeking to kind of get to the best path. And I developed a lot of friends on those sides of the aisle. Really, really cool experience. I think for me, I was surprised by some things are like incredibly informal, like to, I guess when I thought about like writing a bill, I thought it would like, I don't know, like take years and that like, I don't really think I really knew it other than like that Schoolhouse Rock song, but there was a bill that like someone in the house had drafted that they want us to be the Senate co-sponsor on. And I thought like we would have to like do a bunch of research and like write a whole new bill and instead they called us and were like, hey, do you want to be our co-sponsors? And we're like, yeah, it's a great bill. And then that was, and then that is how we became co-sponsors. So I just thought that I feel like there are some ways in which it's incredibly like kind of collaborative and informal that are surprising for an institution that seems so, yeah, like formal and, and or even just the ways that like, I feel like every member of Congress kind of has their like function, like I worked in the office that was like very like vocal and very to the left. And it would be very cool that there would be times when there were maybe people who are a little bit more moderate, like in the staffers would be like, oh, like, you know, this is maybe not a bill that we can introduce, but like you guys should because, you know, that's kind of the role that you play in Congress. So I think it's just, it was, it was very cool to learn that like, yeah, different people in Congress are kind of essentially like, are like kind of fulfilling this different like roles in society and in the institution. And that it's just like, at least within the parties, I feel like it's, it can be like surprisingly, like in reflectionally collaborative when it's just like a good bill that everybody wants to work together to get out. Mine is maybe a thing that I probably shouldn't say, but it was very true. I just didn't realize how much Congress actually does. I think I had sort of the, you know, the classic impression, which is oh, well, what really do they do? And I think particularly this is a function of, for when our class came in, you know, right at sort of the height of the pandemic, but just seeing the amount of things, the amount of ways in which Congress can touch people's lives on like a daily basis, just with the stroke of a pen is, I think really blew me away. And that's like reaching down into like really wonky stuff. Like, oh, if we change this tax credit by moving this comment from here to there, or, you know, if we change this reporting requirement in this way, the way that actually impacts people's lives is really interesting. I think the part of that was, you know, I didn't really expect to be talking to so many folks actually on the ground, you know, constituents of ours in Michigan, but that's actually probably one of the most interesting parts of my job and probably definitely the most rewarding is like getting to talk to the folks who are actually affected by, you know, the wonky policies that you're trying to draft is often the most rewarding part of this because one, they're going to just make whatever you try and do better. And two, I think it's a really, really cool opportunity to understand how this stuff really impacts people. So what's a personal or professional trait that you brought to the fellowship that you found really useful on the Hill? I guess two pieces. First of all, at its core, being a staffer is a customer service job. So if you get really excited about talking to people about, you know, issues that are affecting them and then trying to solution around that, that goes a long way, at least, you know, from a constituent services standpoint, people who come to the Hill often invest an awful lot of time and money into making it happen, but they don't really know how to navigate the system. So being, being an advocate can be really rewarding. And I think it helped me kind of understand how I was a staffer as well. And then the other thing is compartmentalization. You are going to collaborate with people that you are also going to be fighting with at the same time and you have to be good at that. And you have to be okay with that, which can be challenging when you're sitting there with a knife in your back. So I'm being a little dramatic. But, you know, it gets pretty wild and you have to be able to work with people who are on both sides of every issue. Any other traits that have helped you to thrive on the Hill? I don't know if this is a trait so much as something that I've just sort of had to get in my job, but, you know, the ability to sort of multitask triage and prioritize and sort of figure out how much does something really matter? And then also do you have to be able to hold a couple of things, different things in your head at once and sort of juggle, okay, right now I need to be working on this, right now I need to be working on that. It's something that I find super useful because as someone who is, I'm sure like many of the folks listening in, just like a really curious nerd, I have a tendency to kind of wrap it whole into the topic and go really deep down. So, you know, at one point we were looking last fall at some of the concerns around TikTok and the then president banning it. And I like to went all the way down and was looking at like code dumps and memory dumps from the TikTok app. And I realized I had gone too far. So knowing kind of how much you really need to know to answer a given question is a super important skill that I am developing and working on. I would say mine was, I like, I'm not nearly as smart as everybody else on this panel. So I try to focus on like analogies and the so what of stuff. Like, I remember I was talking about cloud computing which I do today professionally and using an analogy of like gasoline and a bunch of motorcycle engines for a member. And like, they're like, you know I like motorcycles, right? And it's like, yeah, I was like, that's how I thought about it to explain this to you. Was like, you know, you got your buddies out there and you guys are, you know, and riding along and you need more gas to get all these engines going. Well, here you go. That's how cloud computing works. It's just, you know, the pump for all of them, right? And he's like, that helped out a lot. Or I was giving a what we call our brown bags and I brought in my kids toys and use them as an analogy on how, you know, their way of me reinforcing them with their toys is not that dissimilar to how reinforced learning happens in machine learning algorithms. And I was giving it to the staffers and I kind of shot a video of like my, of me video with my kids playing with their toys and showing how like the Lego blocks work. And they started to be able to build their own structures. I was like, that's, that's reinforcement. And then I was like, there you go. That's machine learning. And you know, and people, it clicks. I think that that for me, I tend to use a lot of analogies to help me understand some things that I'm not an expert in at the time to help me come up to speed very quickly. I think that helped a lot. I think just also like you will come from a very different background from like your average staffer. It's kind of like what Frank was alluding to about the typical path is like coming in as like an intern working up to like a staff assistant, maybe like a legislative council or it's like a little bit of like policy or oversight work but also still a lot of like constituent work than like a legislative aide or legislative assistant. And you're like by doing a fellowship you're essentially skipping all of those steps I said where you would be gaining kind of like this institutional knowledge or even just knowledge about like a particular office and you're kind of like coming in at this like higher level. So you're able to affect change right from the start. So the fact that you've come that you're like, you know, maybe not like a government major and undergrad and then immediately came to the Hill it's like the right age of 22 will give you such a different perspective that it's like you can't help but bring a bunch of new things like to the office and like to your placements because you will see things in such a different way. And so it was just cool like for me like I'm like especially interested in like diversity and tech and like ethics and tech. And so it's like there was like a firing of a very prominent like black scientists from an unnamed huge tech company. And like this was something that I was obviously like very aware of and that my office wasn't but like I was able to like use my knowledge of like this niche area of like women and people of color and tech and like kind of what was going on there and in tech ethics to like like have our office kind of like have a voice on against like this unethical firing. And so yeah, I think it's like something that helped for me it was just like just coming from a completely different background from most of the staff, even though it will lead to imposter syndrome, how Brooks said it can also just lead to you knowing a bunch of stuff that they don't and like kind of getting to make that number a little bit more well-rounded and a little bit more like in sync with what like different communities are going through and thinking about. Well, to that point, you've all talked about a lot of the great things that you accomplished and discovered in your time on the Hill. And I suspect that when you came in you did not have any idea of all of the different things you were going to end up accomplishing and I know that almost everyone who goes through the program has moments especially in the first like four to six weeks where they really doubt what exactly they're doing there what exactly they're gonna be able to accomplish how it's all gonna fit together. And so I wanted to see if you all could share some tips on how you got through those periods of feeling like an imposter in this new world where you don't have the typical background and obviously we want people who don't have the typical background to go to the Hill for all the reasons you all described but how did you personally get through those times? I'll jump in and reference something that James mentioned earlier, which is the community. I think I absolutely would not have made it through my fellowship year or even nowadays on the Hill without all the support I get both from my team here in the office but also from like a huge community of tech commerce fellows who kind of know what it's like to be in that position as someone new to the Hill and thrust into those kind of jobs. I can almost say with pretty much certainty that like at least once a week I text or call or Slack a tech congress fellow or a alum with a question or with, oh my gosh, what am I doing? Or oh my gosh, how help please? I need like information on this or I have no idea how this is gonna work or some kind of question. And inevitably there's someone who has an answer or someone who has a good word or someone who has a here's how we think you should do this. That's been insanely helpful and folks are just incredibly generous with their time. Yeah, I totally second that. I think it helps to just find someone cool in your office and like latch on to them and yeah, like ask them for help and support and for feedback. Like I think for me, I definitely had an imposter syndrome. I have accepted that like my shadow it will always be with me but it was really nice to find people in the office who would say like, wow, we've never done anything in this area and it's cool that you're bringing us into this space and then I would just like try to talk to them more as like, yeah, like a boost. So I think just all I totally, what some said about like finding community, finding mentors in the office and people who will give you like good honest feedback is like helped a lot for me. My thought on this is to kind of remember that fellowships are actually primarily supposed to be educational vehicles. And you know, you're really primarily there to learn. And you know, as long as you're kind of coming with that mindset pretty much I don't know almost anything else is gravy to be honest. Like there's fellows who are able to pass bills and make things happen and that's wonderful. I think most people will not pass the bill in their first year in Congress, regardless of your fellow or traditional staffer. And I think that's okay. There's only so much that happens in that first year. From my point of view, it's much more important to come out of it like with relationships and a sense of direction and a sense of what you might be able to do if you decide to stay in public policy in one form or another in that first year than any particular accomplishment. So I don't know, that helped me anyway. I'll echo James's sentiment because I had a tagline where when I would introduce myself to the staff and talk to new staffers that came on is, I tell them I'm here to learn and contribute. And so that's both telling what you're here to do but it's also humbling and disarming for it that says that you're willing to do whatever it needs to do. I think by being, and I'd say like being really humble but hungry is really the key for any new person in any job, especially with depending the offices you're in, where they place you in that office. Like in the committee that I was in they elevated me to a very high position right below the staff director above her being kind of her right hand person on technology issues, which is a very senior role in a committee. And so that helps to kind of have that conversation and saying like, I'm here to learn from you as you are here to learn from me and vice versa, right? The core thing of tech capacity is build capacity both ways, right? And so that I think that's what helped me is that I try to give as much as I'm taking out of the program at the same time. So how would you all say being a scholar or a fellow has impacted your careers? I know that a couple of you have just come off of the scholarship, but yeah, tell us how, what you're seeing in terms of career impact so far. I think, oh, sorry, no, go ahead. I can be quick. I mean, mine is an easy one. I work in Congress now, which is not something I ever thought would happen. So this opened a whole new door to a world I probably would otherwise never have entered. Yeah, for me, I feel like I learned so much more about like just the playing field and kind of what I was talking about, how different members of Congress have different roles. I think I learned about even broader in the policy space of the role of Congress, but then also in the role of the executive branch, and but also the role of like nonprofits in drafting like policies. And like, kind of how James was saying, like you probably won't be able to finish a bill in a year, but I started writing a bill and it was so cool in realizing that like you talk to the experts on the Hill, you like write a great piece of legislation and you essentially will send it out to all these like think tanks and nonprofits and they will just like tear to shreds but make it like so much better. So just learning about that interconnectedness and that even if you don't work on the Hill, you can still work in policy. So I don't think I mentioned, but I'm at the ACLU now. So like we're working in the nonprofit space, but on the technology team and it's still a lot of like helping to draft policy and like talking to like state legislatures or people on the Hill giving feedback on their policy. Like I just learned there was this whole like playing field of different organizations that get to do this work besides just being on the Hill. And that was also just really cool for me because I think I just thought like the only people writing bills are Congress and it's way more thankfully, there are way more people involved than just the numbers of Congress, which leads to better legislation. So that was something that I like took away. And I think it's just, it's really helped like kind of focus my interests where I went in and was sort of like, oh, like, you know, I'm really, I'm kind of interested in algorithm bias. I'm kind of interested in like, you know, genomic surveillance and to kind of come out of that year and see like when the year essentially was like, if you can work on anything, what do you want to work on? And like seeing, okay, if I don't have homework or whatever coming from school, like what do I care about? And getting to really focus on that for a year has helped so much in like next career steps with like being able to like make that a reality. So yeah, I feel like it's been great. I will actually, I did it before I came to AWS. I did a similar path, as Chris mentioned. I, at the time, I did not know a lot about the civic society organizations that existed outside that were part of this ecosystem that is the legislative, you know, making of it. And after I finished up my fellowship, as I said, it drained me. So I took some time off, spent it with the family. And then when I came back, I really wasn't, you know, passionate about going right back into the private sector. I wasn't interested in going to government by that time. This is also at the height of the pandemic, right? This is like, you know, March timeframe, 2020. And luckily one of the organizations that we had worked with on the committee had a need for a senior technologist in their organization to help with election security. And so I worked on election security as a staffer through Congress. And it was just perfect. It was, I already knew the people. I already had that network. And, you know, aside from COVID, the election was the next biggest thing happening last year. And so I was like, yeah, and so it was great. So that's how I leverage, you know, that experience. I'll say, I think kind of the theme that's running through a lot of these different answers is that as a technologist, something like this fellowship is gonna give you an awful lot of flexibility that you wouldn't otherwise have. So, you know, even if you don't end up in civil society like Chrysler or Frank or, you know, back on the Hill, I saw him, the opportunities kind of open up in a way that they wouldn't have. So I ended up at a firm, I went to a Boston Consulting Group after the Hill. It's a firm that probably wouldn't have pulled me in using just my strictly technology consulting background. After BCG, I went to a startup to work on kind of helping victims in ransomware scenarios again. But the range of opportunities is definitely a lot more broad than it was before. And everyone is gonna wanna hear about the Tech Congress experience. They're gonna ask you questions in interviews, they're gonna ask you questions in recruiting phases. But yeah, I mean, me again, my background was strictly cybersecurity practitioner. And now, you know, I've had opportunities to be approached by and consider being employed by think tanks and PE firms and, you know, consulting groups and leadership positions that probably wouldn't have been found the way on my career path otherwise. And so, are we about to lose you? Did you wanna share any parting advice before you have to go? Yeah, I apologize, I have to hop off, but just, you know, I wanna say thanks for having me and, you know, if there's really I can underscore, it's just shoot your shot. This is a fantastic program that you've heard from folks here change so many of our lives and career trajectories and it's can do the same for y'all. So thanks. Thank you so much. So we are actually at the moment where we're turning it over to questions from the audience. So let's see what we have. We have a question during the pandemic, were fellows remote or did they continue to work in person? And if they were remote, will there continue to be remote opportunities? So I can certainly answer part of that, which is there will probably not continue to be remote opportunities. The hill is a very face-to-face in-person environment and dealing with a lot of sensitive issues. And so I think it was a struggle for everyone to shift remote. And most people did shift remote. And I think that the hill is just more comfortable with the in-person interface. And so I don't think that they're likely to go back to remote. And certainly just as a point of fact for the fellowship itself, we do require that people move to Washington, DC to the area, the district, Maryland, Virginia area somewhere within easy commuting distance so that you can take advantage of all of those opportunities. And I think Frank was saying something about there was like a trade association for, I don't know, conveyor belts or whatever. There's a trade association for just about everything and you'll learn that in DC pretty quickly. And there's also a happy hour for everything. And so really to take advantage of the networking opportunities of getting to know fellow staffers and offices, we do require that you be in DC. But Crystal, do you wanna speak to the experience of suddenly starting this in the middle of the pandemic and going in and then shifting remote and how that worked for you? Yeah, so it was remote for us the whole time because it ran like June to April, so June, 20 to April, 2021, unfortunately. I definitely also just feel like it makes it like more difficult to do this kind of work, kind of what Frank was saying, like when you are remote, like a lot of it is like making connections and that's kind of like the point of the fellowship is the benefits of all those connections that you make and kind of how Frank was saying, like it can help you find your next job. So I do think that you don't get as much from it if you like aren't in person. So yeah, I think to the person who asked that, it's probably worth it to just like take that year and come to DC and make all these connections if it's something that you're interested in. Thank you. Next question, clearly tech Congress is an excellent opportunity for individuals interested in tech policy. Do you think it would be a worthwhile opportunity for individuals interested in using tech and data science to evaluate proposed or existing policies unrelated to tech, for example, tax policy, infrastructure policy, et cetera? Does anyone have an answer for that one? I think for sure. So like something that we were, we were looking like, so like it was all during like the COVID epidemic and we knew that COVID was especially bad in places like like prisons where it's like a lot of like people living in close quarters. And so this was something that we wrote to like DOJ and Bureau of Prisons about like our concerns about COVID but something like interesting that we found was that they weren't able to even track this policy that they had to for charging incarcerated people for like treatment. They weren't even able to track like essentially how profitable it was because of like some like software like issue where it's like they couldn't just add like a dropdown menu. And I think you'll find like a lot of that like tech is kind of like the undercurrent of a lot of broader like policy issues. There was like another example with like the like system of like like I guess like child like welfare where it also comes down to like like poor like software development and like lack of data. Like a lot of societal problems are due to a lack of data or as I kind of talked about with like talking to the CDC like the misuse of data or improper use. So I think that like just like having those skills and those interests and being able to sit down and like read like, you know, read to like that literature or like how like someone was saying like you can like just look at some code can be like incredibly helpful in so many different policy areas. So I think even if it's not directly related to tech like so many policy areas honestly come down to like bad software and poor data collection. Like it is really eye-opening when you are able to kind of peek behind the curtain. That was great. Thank you, Crystal. Any other thoughts on that? My immediate thought is that it depends on precisely where in the process you mean. If you see yourself as somebody who understands the value and who can explain the value and bring the value and would be excited about like trying to find a way to mandate that people bring the evidence-based approach into, you know, like executive for instance decision-making then yes. But if you actually want to be the one, you know spinning up the VMs and collecting the data and crunching it on your own there may be opportunities for that but I would not say that tech Congress is the most reliable way to do that sort of work. So it depends on what you mean but if nothing else would certainly give you an awful lot more context about how the policy lifecycle works and where you can most effectively plug in. So, you know, if you wanted to do that sort of thing say at an executive branch level TOR and tech Congress can be extremely valuable and make you better at that job. So our next question is about if any of you have preferences between working in for a specific member of Congress or a congressional committee, things to think about in terms of parties and I think I'd love to expand that a little bit into just a conversation about the differences like what are some of the differences that you all found and obviously there's a big debate between do you wanna be on the House side or the Senate side? Do you wanna be, you know in the minority and the majority I think James started to alluded to that earlier just thoughts on all of those decisions. So I'll say, you know I was on a House committee and the House in itself, right only exists for two years, right and then they're back up. So, you know your opportunity to kind of be certain that you're gonna be in the majority or the minority is a little bit more challenging and so they tend to move faster because they have to, you know they know that there's a time limited bucket on the committee side and on the committee as I mentioned before we're more focused on good governance of the executive branch, a lot more oversight the processes, alignment, authorities, all that. We don't really focus much on any constituent issues specifically. We tend to meet more with either the executive branch or trade associations but it's not as if we're going to meet say maybe in the private office and Crystal and James can talk a little bit more about that of an individual person from that state or district or a individual business owner for that we're gonna be more in coalition. So if you are more interested in kind of the broad strokes big picture but trying to get stuff done really quickly the house is, you know kind of where you might want in a committee office. This is a really challenging question because I'll say and I'm curious I'm gonna check this off of Crystal and Frank here but I feel like most fellows come in with a hypothesis about where they think they wanna be or whether it's best to be personal or committee or house or Senate or whatever and at least one portion of your opinion will change in part of the orientation process. And then also, I mean there's different motivations for going to different offices. So for me it came down to I ended up working for Senator Paul who I had been very interested in personally for a long time in his political career but I was balanced like my ultimate decision was between Senator Paul's office and a committee office with frankly a much better jurisdiction for a lot of the issues that I had wanted to work on. So I ended up with the decision to offers two very different shapes of what the year is gonna look like and it comes down to just trusting that no matter what you pick there's gonna be positives and you'll be able to pull something out of the experience but yeah, there's a lot of variance between the different offices that are out there which I would choose to interpret because a lot of opportunity to find something to plug in where you can be most effective and most happy. Yeah, let's see. So I think coming in I had heard and I think yeah, like James was saying your opinions will change during orientation as you learn more about it but I had heard like the skinny was that you're doing, if you're in a personal office in the, if you're in a personal office it's going to be kind of like more constituent work and you'll be like a little bit more of like a jack of all trades whereas in a committee it's way more like focused and like on like maybe your area of interest in the committee is like jurisdiction. And so I liked the idea of being in a personal office and I'd heard that like that is it's even more extreme with like your portfolio being really, really wide in the house versus in a Senate personal office. So that kind of led me to want to do a Senate personal office and the decision for me kind of came down to either going to an office that didn't really have like established tech like team or one that did and it was like, okay, do I want to maybe like join someone who's already very established on this issue and it'll kind of like continue like, you know the ball's already rolling just kind of jump on or do I want to try to like help a member establish like and build up their like tech portfolio. So I think there's like, there's just so many factors of like, is it more important to you to work with a member that you know, like you share a background with or is it more important to join like a member who already is like established on your issue? I think there's just like so many factors in making that decision. And but I think that that's something that they and I think it's a question on the application is kind of like what members are you thinking? So I think it is definitely a good thing to kind of think about is like how constituent focus do you want to be? How many, how why do you want your like portfolio to be? Or do you want it to be a little bit more like focused? Like, are you okay with them? Maybe kind of more partisan nature of the house even though like, but the benefit of course is like that like things will get done much more quickly or are you kind of okay with like the slower more bipartisan like we have to find a compromise pace in the Senate. It's just like, yeah, it's like, there's so many factors and it just kind of just comes down to like what you feel like is like right for you. But I think that's something to definitely think about and to like express in your application and like show that you've thought about it too. If I can throw in one more quick comment about like politics generally, like, you know if you're at all curious whether or not your personal bend in politics is gonna affect your application, it probably won't. So we've had fellows who have come in and worked for leadership in both parties. We've had fellows who come in and work in like the more fringe elements of both parties in the house and Senate. And we have people who come in with very strong political opinions and a very certain agenda of what they wanna do. We've had other fellows come in. There was one guy who in my cohort who when he came in, he said I honestly don't know if I'm a Republican or Democrat. I never gave much thought to it. I'm just here to try to do good work and he got a good office and did good work. So there's a range. Thank you all for that. One thing that I didn't wanna lose sight of we haven't really talked much about the orientation process but I do wanna let everyone on the call know that you don't just come in and then get dumped into an office with no preparation. So I was wondering if any of you wanted to talk just a little bit about the orientation process. I feel like Ted Congress orientation was amazing. I learned so much in like such a short period of time and I don't wanna like throw shade but there's another large fellowship program for like STEM focused people and who I've had a ton of friends do and in talking to them about their orientation it's just like very clear that we learn like so much more about the ins and outs of the hill. I didn't name it so like hopefully I won't control but yeah I think I just think it's really incredible and it takes you comfortably from like zero to a hundred in terms of like your knowledge of how to navigate the hill. I think it's mostly like led by Travis but he also brings in some alums and some like other just like supporters of Ted Congress some like who like worked on the hill for a long time or know a lot about it. And yeah it's just like it was just like such excellent advice from how to choose placement to even like kind of how to like the culture of how to act on the hill where I feel like coming from like especially like science disciplines like my whole PhD was like you read a paper and then everyone tears it apart for an hour and it's like you cannot do that. Someone can't send you a bill and you can't just be like here's all the things wrong. Like it's sort of like even just learning that like the way to kind of like act on the hill like I think it was like a really like great experience and I like got to go into my office with a lot more confidence as a result of orientation. So I can't say like enough good things about it. No, I can't say beyond what Crystal said. She nailed it there, you know the orientation is very intentional and as any great startup it's iterative, you know. I've seen from the feedback that we provided when I was a fellow in 2019, gets incorporated in the 2020 and so on and so forth. So those of you who are applying today will have a lot better orientation than I had than James had or that Crystal had. So that's the best part is it's not static, it's getting better and it's hard to get better from at least the quality that we have. Yeah, I'm three years removed and I mean, I thought my orientation was spectacular. So I feel like we got a lot of value and one of the things you're gonna notice is that tech Congress, I mean, conceptually building congressional capacity is a pretty popular idea. Most people want that to happen and so there's a lot of friends of the program that you'll be introduced through the orientation process. A lot of names in the policy space that you might be surprised by and think tanks from both sides will come in and plug in and educate. And yeah, just a phenomenal process. Yes, and it has changed a lot over the years since Frank and James's orientation times and we're now at almost three weeks of orientation for incoming scholars and fellows which is an expansion from the early days because we did realize that people need it because we take feedback from Frank and James and Crystal and everyone as they go through and then we do really try to take all of that feedback to heart and change the orientation process every time to provide you with everything that you need to be successful in your time. So shifting into the sort of public interest tech space, just a couple of questions about public interest tech and just hoping you all could talk a little bit about what being a public interest technologist or civic technologist or however you want to define that, what that means to you. I can go first, I'll try. So it's a tough one to put the finger on but I think the key is, you have opinions you've got experience as a technologist and what public interest technologist really is is finding a way to bring the value in your experience and your insight and scale it up for maximum benefit. So that would be my hot take. I look at it as a, if you have that natural drive to serve, if that's what, and because all the technologists that are recruited for this program and other public interest tech programs, the ones that are successfully brought on to the programs are ones that love service, they want a mission. They could be doing anything they want with their tech talents but they choose to do it in, to improve the lives of veterans, getting, accessing VA.gov or they improve the opportunity of children getting chip benefits by doing an analysis of showing how the backend payment systems are failing at the state level, right? It's these people who want and care about saying, I have a skill set and I could be doing anything but I want to devote my life to service of my country, of making my communities better, of elevating my group into higher status. That's how I look at what public interest tech is. Yeah, I totally agree with both. So after my fellowship ended, similarly I was like trying to decide kind of what to do next and had some interviews at some like big tech companies and just like felt very, we got to the question of like, why do you want to work here? And I could just feel that like whatever I was going to say next was going to have to be a lie because it's like, I really want to like help, you know, get more people to stay on this like huge tech platform all day, scrolling. And it was just so nice to in my like current role where I'm still working in the tech policy space but in like kind of like a civil society group that it's like, it felt like, it's like these, like writing a cover letter or even just like talking the interview just felt honest. It's like, I want to use my background to like try to make the world better. And in this case, it's like, my training is, it's just like finding what your training is and finding how you can use that to make a world better. Like I'm trained as a geneticist. I'm like hoping to like get to work on like, like these like data privacy and like like genomics surveillance like laws and like trying to kind of push for awareness there. It's been really cool to not have to lie in interviews, I guess is maybe my big takeaway. That's how you know you're in the right like sector in terms of public interest tech. And it's just like you want to use your tech skills to make the world better instead of make some billionaire, a multi-billionaire. Thank you. We have another question from the audience. How difficult would it be for a self-taught technologist to make it in public technology? And if education is out of reach, what would an alternative be to be in service? I don't think being self-taught like should have like any, I would hope it wouldn't have any barriers. I know that like some of the like fellows my year like were taught through like had attended like camps and to get their like hands-on like tech experience. And so it's like, if anything, if you can accomplish the same competency on your own and that's a testament to you and your determination. So I wouldn't let that, I wouldn't let that hold you back or make you feel any imposter syndrome. Yep. And I'll say, you know, I remember reviewing some applications for folks who came through Tech Congress. And I remember a couple of people who didn't have degrees but who actually had assembled really impressive work especially internationally with public interest technology that really made for a compelling case for a fellow. So I think that there's a lot of opportunity out there and I think one of the things that's really, I mean, PIT didn't really exist when I was in college. And now it's like this big thing where we've got this university network and we've got, you know, everyone who's attending this and anyone who watches it after the fact who's interested in this intersection there's a big community and you can plug into it any number of different ways. And there's a lot of work to be done. So at the end of the day, I don't think there's gonna be any sort of gate on a degree requirement. So, yeah. And, you know, I think in an application specifically doesn't ask, like we don't look for, you know, what your credentials are. We looked at what your capacity to do amazing things and what you have done. And in my true sense of a technologist is someone who understands technology in the wild versus like the academic aspect of it. And so if you or anyone has, you know, learned how to code on their own or known or learned how to understand network architecture or any, you know, additive manufacturing on the hard tech side or anything. If you've taken that initiative, you've taken that drive that is extremely compelling a story because that's where we're moving to. We're moving to a place of builders and doers. And if you've already demonstrated that, I think that's actually a little bit more compelling of a story because when you're in Congress that is the majority of people. They're not, you know, the most Americans are not degree masters or PhD individuals. They're individuals with a high school diploma or a GED. And so you can relate to that space better than any other person on their staff who probably do have a law degree or some other advanced degree or terminal degree. So I think that makes, you know, the diversity of thought in tech Congress even better. And we have time for one last question. And this is what is a piece of advice that you would give someone who is about to embark on a public interest tech career? Sorry, I'm gonna jump in first again. Something came top of mind. Carly, I think I see you're still on. You would ask the question about, you know, if you're interested in using data science to affect policy, I do wanna highlight a couple other like PIT flavored programs out there that I think might drive for that. There's the, you know, AT&F and USDS which might be excellent avenues for that sort of work. So if you haven't had eyes on those yet, I'd definitely kind of turn my attention to that. And then on the, to your question, Brooke, on the same theme, just understanding the breadth of the space out there and the amount of opportunities that Congress has a wonderful opportunity. It's not the only one. There's presidential innovation fellowship. There's the coding it forward, which is a program that I mentor for, which also may directly tie into Carly what you were asking about. There's, you know, partisan the angles on both sides that also contribute to this. There's the Lincoln Network and others. And of course, the great work being done by New America, who I believe are very frequently looking for folks as well. So it's a huge space. Don't be afraid to reach out to people and plug in. Very often people like talking about their portfolios and their work. So get coffee with people, get virtual coffee with people and explore. I'll take definitely try it because you will work on really big problems in public interest tech. It's not what, you know, if you're going to, you know, some other type of organization where you might be working on, you know, devising a feature set on some software product or you're working on this small thing, right? Public interest tech by definition is really hard, really, really hard problems. That tech is not normally, that is not traditionally going to be the answer. It's just gonna be the enabler of the solution, right? And so being able to understand that will, you know, at least in open your aperture, give you broad sense of experience. But at the end of the day, if you do want to pivot from there to go to traditional consumer tech or to clean tech or whatever other, you know, area, this is a great foundation to have to really understand, you know, customers and user design and all those key things that are really important for you to be even better at whatever is next. Yeah, I think those are like both perfectly said. I think absolutely, like my advice is just, it's just like go for it and it doesn't matter what your like background or our expertise is in. There is a need for you in public interest tech. So it's just kind of like carving out your niche. And I think like great piece of advice I learned when I was in your shoes was like, whenever you are doing those like networking, like Zoom calls with people, is to always ask them who are three other people that you suggest I talk to. And that has really helped me meet a ton of other people in this space. Because yeah, public interest tech, I feel like that wasn't a thing like what like 10 years ago and it's this new field that's only gonna keep growing. So it's good to, yeah, it's great to like build your network now. And yeah, just don't be afraid to jump in. Thank you. I'm gonna steal that, Carly. We're at Kristen. Yeah, that was a great one. I just wanted to say thank you all. Thank you to Crystal, to James, to Frank, to Sohum, Alberto, the New America events team, Jason and Angela and the tech Congress team, Alina, Travis, Elaine. This was a great event. I hope everyone got some answers to their questions. And I just also want to remind you to please apply to the program by August the 10th. We are again accepting scholars and fellows for this round. It'll be the first time that we have a hybrid model, having fellows mid-career and scholars more early career. So please, please, please apply. And again, imposter syndrome is real, you can beat it. Just go ahead and apply. Alberto, any last words? Oh, nothing more to add. This was an amazing conversation and it's definitely an amazing program. So we will be really excited to see the next generation of scholars and fellows that come into and try to, make an impact. Thank you again to all the others of these and we'll see you on the next one.