Jennifer Pahlka

Founder and Executive Director, Code for America

313 - The Women Empowering Code for America

Jennifer Pahlka is the founder and executive director of Code for America, a non-profit organization that helps residents and governments harness technology to solve community problems.

Jennifer is known for her March 2012 TED talk, "Coding a Better Government." She is the recipient of several awards, including MIT's Kevin Lynch Award, the Oxford Internet Institute's Internet and Society Award, and the National Democratic Institute's Democracy Award. She spent eight years at CMP Media, where she ran the Game Developers Conference, Game Developer magazine, Gamasutra.com, and the Independent Games Festival. Previously, Jennifer ran the Web 2.0 and Gov 2.0 events for TechWeb, in conjunction with O'Reilly Media.

A graduate of Yale University, Ms. Pahlka's early career was spent in the non-profit sector. She has just returned to Code for America after a year's leave to serve as Deputy Chief Technology Officer in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under CTO Todd Park.