Abhi Nemani

• Connect entrepreneurs in public, private, and non-profit sectors to make more responsive social policy, developing new approaches and technologies to implement them, on issues ranging from criminal justice to public health.
• Work with senior government officials to create and implement innovation strategies. Public officials have worked with Ethos to set technology and economic development policy, modernize IT departments, and boost transparency.
• Advise, consult with, and invest in civic startups with a focus on fundraising, product, and marketing. 100% of Ethos' startups have closed VC financing rounds; many have seen significant growth (>500%) in ARR; and some have successfully exited.
• Built and continue to grow the Public Innovation Academy, a library of best practices and a community of public innovation professionals to connect, strengthen, and connect the industry.
• Past partners include major foundations (e.g., Knight & Arnold), governments and campaigns (e.g., NJ Attorney General's Office & Newsom for CA), and civic technology organizations (e.g., ZenCity, GovDelivery & SPIDRTech).

• Developed new course and curriculum on Civic Technology — including best practices, the existing ecosystem, and challenges specific to the industry — for masters students in the Computer Science and Public Policy schools during a one-year appointment; taught the course to 30+ students, while helping them find new positions upon graduation.
• Concluded year-long contract position by published course materials — syllabus, reading list, and lecture slides and notes — openly, which dozens of other schools and NGOs internationally have used in their own training programs.

• Developed and launched the city's landmark $10M Innovation and Growth Fund (IGF) to promote entrepreneurship and innovation, which was approved the by city council unanimously.
• Created and administered the RAILS $1M grant program—Rapid Acceleration, Innovation, and Leadership in Sacramento—to support local startups enablers, which received over 140 applications, totaling over $17M in grant requests.
• Built the Mayor's Office for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, recruited permanent staff (including permanent CIO) and an advisory Mayor's Tech Council of local leaders, and codified policies and budget through City Council.

• Led Los Angeles to #1 ranking for US Open Data cities in under one year, by publishing over 400 datasets; earned the Platinum Open Data Certification from international data consortium, WCCD.
• Built Mayoral Dashboard, which is used regularly by the Mayor and Senior Staff to increase performance and accountability; the dashboard has saved the city over $180K, and has been freely reused by other cities.
• Set up first-of-its-kind city data GeoHub (GIS) to share over 1,000 geospatial datasets more easily internally and externally, and deployed various critical applications atop this platform.
• Mobilized the local volunteer community to include 10K+ members that host monthly events and app competitions focused on sustainable innovation; ran the largest civic hackathon in the country.
• Supported multiple departments—e.g. Personnel and Fire—in digital transformations through training and consultations to enhance citizen experience and reduce costs; earned LA the ranking of #1 Digital City.

• Helped build, launch, and run international non-profit designed to transform local governments through technology, leading growth, product strategy, and assessment.
• Implemented fundraising strategy for a $10M+ budget, including foundation engagement, corporate sponsorship, and individual philanthropy. Managed and grew multi-million dollar grant relationships with Omidyar Network, Google.org, and other major national foundations, and paired charitable contributions with sales revenue from contracts with dozens of governments.
• Created groundbreaking technology fellowship program for local governments in 2011, recruiting over 360 applicants for the inaugural class, selecting top 20 for three teams that created over 20 civic applications in partnership with 3 cities. Over the next three years, the fellowship expanded to 10 cities per year with 30-35 fellows, building hundreds of civic tools.
• Spearheaded development of growth programs: the first-of-its-kind civic startup accelerator, leading to dramatic growth in activity in the space; the Peer Network, a collaborative platform for over 100 government change-agents; and the CfA Brigade, a now 10,000+ member community of volunteer civic technologists.
• Launched internationalization strategy of "Code for All" with various partners including the World Bank.
• Chaired Code for America Summit, the premier gathering of ~1,000 civic innovators from around the world, leading strategy, editorial, and design, growing attendance 275 percent and revenue 150 percent.
• Published Beyond Transparency, an anthology compiling dozens of case studies from civic leaders on open data.
• Built policy focus areas (e.g. public health) with product teams designed to develop reusable apps.
• Designed branding campaigns featured in the New York Times, Mashable, Gizmodo & Boing Boing.

• Oversaw 30 student researchers, supervised project work, handled personnel, and coordinated budget of over $50,000 with senior staff, focused on government innovation and transparency research agenda.
• Led National Ballot Initiative open data project, researching and cataloging over 900 measures for public access, which led to the publication of a scholarly book, “Direct Democracy and the Courts,” published by Cambridge University.
• Led the Digital Archiving project of 20 student employees to publish hundreds of political documents online, becoming the first digital political library for the state of California.
• Developed, researched, and published, Inland Empire Outlook, a unique economic survey of the region, in collaboration with various professors and students; hosted a parallel conference with local government and business leaders.

• Led creation of digital strategy for "Gone Google" marketing campaign, conducting marketing research, designing digital assets, and developing reusable online tools, which was featured by AdWeek, Mashable, and VentureBeat; campaign reached over 1M in under 10 days
• Developed B2B social media marketing strategy for Google Apps, driving adoption of new social media techniques within Google's enterprise marketing team

• University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy Mentor of the Year
• GovTech 100 (for various startups), Government Technology Magazine
• Blair Award for State and Local Government
• Partner, Truman National Security Project
• Top 10 CDOs to Watch, Technical.ly
• Member, Future of Urban Development Initiative of the World Economic Forum
• National Fellow, Young Democrats of America
• Edward J. Sexton Fellow; Philosophy, Politics, and Economics
• Harrison Fellow, Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World
• Berger Award for Top Student, Claremont McKenna College
• All-American Attorney, American College Mock Trial Association
• Breakthrough Publication of the Year: Claremont Port Side (Editor-in-Chief), Center for American Progress

• White House Champions of Change
• Government Technology Magazine: Change-makers
• 2012 MDC Partners & Wired Humanitarian Award
• MIT Lynch Award for Urban Affairs
• 2012 Oxford Internet and Society Award

• #1 Open Data City, US Open Data Census
• Platinum Open Data Certification, World Council on City Data (WCCD)
• #1 Digital City, Government Technology Magazine

Articles

• Dashboards: The Underbelly of the Smart City | University of Missouri Kansas City Law Review (Spring 2017)
• Engines of Civic Entrepreneurship | Hacker Noon (Feb 2016)
• Small (City) Pieces, Loosely Joined | Medium (July 2014)
• 7 Tactics for 21st Century Government | Government Magazine (Oct 2013)
• Here's what we need for civic tech to flourish in government | Apolitical (December 2018)
• GIS Hub Vision | ArcNews (April 2015)
• Towards a Code for Africa | World Bank Symposium (Jan 2014)
• Restoring Cities as Engines for Opportunity | CityMinded (Sept 2013)
• Turning Civic Interest into Action | Government Executive (Aug 2014)
• Beyond Transparency: What's Next? | Code for America Press (June 2012)
• Government as a Platform | TechCrunch (June 2012)
• Accelerating San Francisco | Huffington Post (Jan 2013)

Presentations

• TEDxSacramento, “Hack of the Century: Cities”
• Federal Communications Summit (Washington DC), “Government is What We Do Together”
• Fabric of the City (Paris), “Building an Open Data Community”
• National Association of Government Webmasters Annual Conference, "Let's Move Beyond Open Data Portals"
• SXSW (Austin, TX), “Hacking for Sustainable Cities”
• University of Virginia, “The Politics, Philosophy, and Economics of Civic Tech”
• Anchorage Economic Development Annual Summit, “Moneyballing Innovation”
• GitHub Universe, “Opensourcing Government”
• Big Kansas City, “Disruption as a Public Service”
• MAD (Hong Kong), “Civic Startups”
• Health DataPalooza (Washington DC), “Core Principles of Open Data”
• PDF (NYC), “Digital Inclusion & OpenGov”
• Digital Cities (Buenos Aires), “A Tale of Two Cities”
• Agile Alliance (Nashville, TN), “The Principles of Agile and of Government”
• World Bank (DC), “Spreading Innovation”