GovDelivery announced today that Abhi Nemani, former co-Executive Director for Code for America, speaker and writer, will join GovDelivery as its first Civic Innovator in Residence. Nemani will bring a compelling perspective and network from the civic innovation community to GovDelivery. He will be offering thought leadership and guidance to GovDelivery clients; seeking innovative partnering opportunities to drive expansion of GovDelivery’s ability to connect public sector organizations with more people; and supporting GovDelivery’s GovLoop division with its recent Knight Foundation grant to develop an online education site for federal, state and local government employees that will feature free, short training content, such as webinars, videos and podcasts.
For the past four years, Nemani worked with Jennifer Pahlka, former Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States, to help build the national non-profit, Code for America (CfA), a technology organization dedicated to reinventing government for the 21st century. Nemani led CfA’s product strategy for more than 30 civic technology applications aimed at improving local government challenges, from business licensing to food stamps and public safety. He also led the organization’s efforts to scale by building new programs, including a first-of-its-kind civic startup accelerator, an international volunteer corps and a collaborative network for hundreds of government innovators.
As the Civic Innovator in Residence, Nemani will work on a variety of projects for GovDelivery and its subsidiary, GovLoop, the knowledge network for 100,000+ government employees. Nemani will leverage GovDelivery’s expertise in public sector communications, cloud-based technology solutions and expansive audience of more than 65 million people worldwide to advance impactful civic innovation projects. Nemani will also work with GovLoop on courses focused on open data and human-centered design.
Nemani’s work at CfA has been featured in the New York Times, Government Technology, and Forbes, and he has been featured as a speaker at SxSW, the World Bank, and various universities and conferences around the world. Since stepping back from his role at Code for America, Abhi has been working with a number of civic technology organizations to address the needs and gaps in the civic innovation space, and will continue to as he works with GovDelivery as its first Civic Innovator-in-Residence.
“When I first learned about GovDelivery in 2012, I was astonished to discover that they were reaching nearly 40 million people around the world on behalf of more than 1,000 government agencies, and now that number is over 65 million,” said Nemani. “With that scale, GovDelivery holds a unique place in the civic technology ecosystem, a testament to the caliber of the team and product. What drew me to GovDelivery now was the prospect of collaborating to move the whole field forward: helping governments connect to each other, helping citizens get access to services they need, and helping everyone who works with civic technology to have a bigger collective impact.”
“Abhi is a world class thinker and innovator. I admired his work at Code for America and am honored that he has chosen to be our first Civic Innovator in Residence,” said Scott Burns, CEO and co-Founder of GovDelivery. “This is a perfect platform for Abhi to do what he does best which is to advocate for innovation that makes a difference across the public sector.”
