Abhi Nemani

• Built and manage a portfolio of government technology (GovTech) startups with a focus on sales, product, and marketing. Ethos companies now cover over 10,000 local governments internationally serving over 150M people, including ZenCity, POLCO, and Camino.
• Drive mergers & acquisition strategy for Private Equity firms (ONEX Partners and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe - WCAS), advise foundations (Knight Foundation & Arnold Foundation) on grantmaking and metrics/analytics, and consult large firms on enterprise growth (Granicus/GovDelivery) on deals ranging from $5M to $2B.
• Advise senior government officials (e.g., New Jersey Attorney General & Governor of California) and non-profits to create and implement innovation strategies for economic development, IT modernization, and transparency.
• Rebuilt an typically in-person social services organization's digital strategy and systems when COVID began, expanding its reach from roughly 30,000/month to ~1.2M/month.
• Developed growth strategy for select partners by embedding for short-term, but operational leadership positions:
  • Innovator-in-Residence, Granicus/GovDelivery
  • Chief Product Officer, SPIDRTech
  • Director, CivicPulse

• Developed and taught the first course and curriculum on Civic Technology for masters students in the Computer Science and Public Policy
• Published lectures and lecture notes have been used by dozens of universities, NGOs, and companies in their government and civic technology 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 a $1M grant program—Rapid Acceleration, Innovation, and Leadership in Sacramento (RAILS)—to support local startups enablers, receiving 140 applications, totaling over $17M in grant requests.
• Led first-of-its-kind investment from a municipal government in a national venture capital fund and program (500 Startups), making the city an LP and encouraging startup relocation to Sacramento.
• Built the Mayor's Office for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, recruited permanent staff (including permanent CIO) and the 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.

• Built, launched, and ran an award-winning non-profit designed to transform local governments through technology, leading product, growth, and assessment, which grew work with hundreds of cities and became a model for the White House's digital strategy.
• Created groundbreaking technology fellowship program for local governments in 2011, recruiting over 360 applicants for the inaugural class 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.
• Implemented fundraising strategy for a $15M+ 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.
• Spearheaded development of growth programs: the first-of-its-kind civic startup accelerator, leading to dramatic growth in activity in the space and the CfA Brigade, a now 50,000+ member community of volunteer civic technologists.
• Launched internationalization strategy by building sister NGO, "Code for All" with 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% and revenue 150%.

• 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.

• 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

• 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

• How Cities Can Compete in the Future of Work | USC Price School of Public Policy (Fall 2022)
• Dashboards: The Underbelly of the Smart City | University of Missouri Kansas City Law Review (Spring 2017)
• Engines of Civic Entrepreneurship | Hacker Noon (Feb 2016)
• 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 (Book / Editor & Publisher) | Code for America Press (June 2012)
• 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”
• Texas Association of State Systems for Computing and Communications, “How the Smart City Failed”
• Federal Communications Summit (Washington DC), “Government is What We Do Together”
• Leading Cities, “GovTech Tailwinds”
• Fabric of the City (Paris), “Building an Open Data Community”
• National Association of Government Webmasters Annual Conference, "Let's Move Beyond Open Data Portals"
• Coding it Forward"Building a Civic Tech Career"
• SXSW (Austin, TX), “Hacking for Sustainable Cities”
• University of Virginia, “The Politics, Philosophy, and Economics of Civic Tech”
• Big Kansas City, “Disruption as a Public Service”
• MAD (Hong Kong), “Civic Startups”
• 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”

EDUCATION