How Tech Becomes Law How Tech Becomes Law

Megan Mahle walks us through how she invests in American innovation from the lens of Department of Homeland Security. Through programs like the Small Business Innovation Research grant and the Silicon Valley Innovation Program, DHS enables startups to build new technologies that are useful both for security and commercial purposes.

Check out the Homeland Security Startup Studio CONVERGE event at: https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/hsss-22-converge

Guest bio:

Megan Mahle is the Director of Industry Partnerships at DHS S&T. The role of the Industry Partnerships Division is to lead the formation and sustainment of internal and external partnerships across research and development (R&D) communities. These efforts will enable joint R&D and result in stronger connections with developer and user communities. Industry Partnerships is responsible for innovation mechanisms, such as Small Business Innovation Research, Silicon Valley Innovation Program, Prize Authority, and Broad Agency Announcements, and Post-R&D activities associated with technology transfer and commercialization.

Ms. Mahle has been at S&T since February 2008 serving in several positions, including as the S&T Cyber Security Division (CSD) Business Operations Manager, CSD Program Manager for the Law Enforcement Support portfolio, including the anonymous networks and currencies, cybersecurity forensics and insider threat projects, and program support contractor for the Command, Control and Interoperability Division. Ms. Mahle holds a bachelor’s degree from Mary Washington College and a master’s degree from Catholic University.

About the podcast:

How Tech Becomes Law is a weekly public interest tech podcast about technology, public policy, and career advice. We are your co-hosts, Jinyan Zang and Dhruv Gupta. Each episode uncovers insights from leaders in government, business, journalism, and academia to highlight how technology can be built in the public interest. Interviewees discuss how technology can move society forward, what role they play in shaping this, and how students and young professionals can impact the path forward.

We are supported by the Public Interest Tech Lab. Listen to us on your podcast platform of choice. You can find us online at howtechbecomeslaw.org and on social media channels @techbecomeslaw.

How can we ensure the future of this country is determined by those who'll have to live in it? We speak with Jahnavi Rao, founder of New Voters, which is a non-profit that has helped over 50,000 high school students register to vote across the nation. Jahnavi discusses her work in managing a nationwide, distributed team of volunteers who help students register and make a difference in their high school communities. Jahnavi notes how voting has begun to be politicized, although younger voters on both sides of the aisle are still excited to have their voice heard. Jahnavi talks about her personal experiences in helping students vote, offers advice on her own career, and also discusses the vaccine outreach New Voters conducted over the past year. Listen in to be inspired by the work that she and her team are doing to ensure that young voters feel heard and empowered in an ever-changing world.

Guest bio:

Following the 2016 election, Jahnavi founded New Voters as a club at her high school, where she registered over 85% of her class to vote and mobilized her peers while she herself was too young to vote.

Since then, Jahnavi and the New Voters team have grown the school club into a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit, working with high school student-leaders across America to help them host highly-successful non-partisan voter registration drives at their schools. For the 2020 election, New Voters registered 50,000 high school students across 300 high school chapters.

Outside of New Voters, Jahnavi served as the Founder and Director of High School Engagement at the Harvard Votes Challenge, Co-President of the Harvard South Asian Women's Collective, and is an active cast member of the Harvard College Opera Society. In her free time, you can find Jahnavi listening to Taylor swift and watching vine compilations.

About the podcast:

How Tech Becomes Law is a weekly public interest tech podcast about technology, public policy, and career advice. We are your co-hosts, Jinyan Zang and Dhruv Gupta. Each episode uncovers insights from leaders in government, business, journalism, and academia to highlight how technology can be built in the public interest. Interviewees discuss how technology can move society forward, what role they play in shaping this, and how students and young professionals can impact the path forward.

We are supported by the Public Interest Tech Lab. Listen to us on your podcast platform of choice. You can find us online at howtechbecomeslaw.org and on social media channels @techbecomeslaw.

How do we build a regulator for digital platforms? In this episode, we talk to Tom Wheeler, former Chair of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), about how regulators can balance technological innovation with other public interests such as protecting truth in media, a competitive marketplace, consumer data privacy, and more. Listen to Tom discuss how as the Chair of the FCC, he was able to implement rules to enforce net neutrality, data privacy, cybersecurity, and affordable broadband access for schools across the U.S. Tom discusses in detail about his proposal for a new agile regulator of digital platforms in the U.S. that he worked on with colleagues at Harvard University in order to fight the big con from Big Tech of needing "permissionless innovation" in order for the U.S. to remain competitive. With this new digital platforms regulator, the U.S. can take a leadership position in the world by creating the rules for how technology should interact with Americans rather than ceding control to the E.U., the U.K, or China. One of the areas the regulator can drive innovation is in creating more open data systems where consumers can switch social networks in the future as easily as they can switch phone providers today. Finally, Tom reflects on his illustrious career to offer some advice to recent grads to follow their passions, whether that's to Capitol Hill, to a private tech company, to a regulatory agency, or to a graduate degree. Ultimately, what they just need to get started and what they do for the next 3 years or 5 years is only the beginning of the long arc of their career.

Guest bio:

Tom Wheeler served as the Chairman of the FCC from 2013 to 2017 under President Obama. For more than three decades, Wheeler has been involved with new telecommunications networks and services, experiencing the revolution in telecommunications as a policy expert, advocate, and businessman. As an entrepreneur, he started or helped start multiple companies offering cable, wireless, and video communications services. He is currently a Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government and a Senior Fellow at HKS’ Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Related links:

From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future. Tom Wheeler. https://www.brookings.edu/book/from-gutenberg-to-google/

About the podcast:

How Tech Becomes Law is a weekly public interest tech podcast about technology, public policy, and career advice. We are your co-hosts, Jinyan Zang and Dhruv Gupta. Each episode uncovers insights from leaders in government, business, journalism, and academia to highlight how technology can be built in the public interest. Interviewees discuss how technology can move society forward, what role they play in shaping this, and how students and young professionals can impact the path forward.

We are supported by the Public Interest Tech Lab. Listen to us on your podcast platform of choice. You can find us online at howtechbecomeslaw.org and on social media channels @techbecomeslaw.

Jarred Johnson and Ethan Finlan join us from Transit Matters, a Boston-based equitable transit advocacy group to help us envision a transit-forward Boston. Jarred and Ethan frame the conversation by discussing how necessary building sustainable infrastructure is in the US, as well as pointing to its rising importance in tackling climate change and moving us from our auto centric networks. They further discuss their views for the future of regional rail, expanding and streamlining access to the far-flung suburbs of Boston. Finally, they walk through their career paths into transit advocacy.
Guest bio:
Jarred has been the ED of TM for nearly 3 years. In that time TransitMatters has launched a number of highly regarded reports, and led successful campaigns on Regional Rail, racial equity, and more. Jarred also sits on the board of Abundant Housing Massachusetts. He comes to this position following service as Project Manager for the Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation where he managed a variety of complex affordable housing real estate projects and supported organizing efforts for better service on the Fairmount Line. Before that, Jarred helped to start the “Love Your Block” mini-grant project and helped write the City of Boston’s first Volunteer Plan as a part of the Civic Engagement Office. He also has a wealth of grassroots organizing experience working on various presidential, state, and Cherokee tribal races. Jarred joined TransitMatters as a volunteer member in the summer of 2015 and has served on the Board since the fall of that year.
Ethan Finlan leads the Regional Rail program at Transit Matters. At Transit Matters, he leads the campaign to bring Boston’s Commuter Rail network into the 21st century through planning and advocacy. He regularly contributes to Market Urbanism Report, and has contributed to Boston Rail Fan and the DC Policy Center.
About the podcast:
How Tech Becomes Law is a weekly public interest tech podcast about technology, public policy, and career advice. We are your co-hosts, Jinyan Zang and Dhruv Gupta. Each episode uncovers insights from leaders in government, business, journalism, and academia to highlight how technology can be built in the public interest. Interviewees discuss how technology can move society forward, what role they play in shaping this, and how students and young professionals can impact the path forward.
We are supported by the Public Interest Tech Lab. Listen to us on your podcast platform of choice. You can find us online at howtechbecomeslaw.org and on social media channels @techbecomeslaw.

How can we fix the harms created by social media? In this episode, we talk to Trisha Prabhu from ReThink about addressing cyberbullying and other harms on social media. Listen to Trisha discuss how as a teenager she came to building an anti-cyberbullying app to tackle the problems that she saw firsthand in her community and with her peers and how working on this problem over almost a decade has shaped her perspective on what the future of content moderation can look like. As a scholar, Trisha has dived deep into how the U.S. has confronted the need to balance free speech with other public interests to successfully regulate other media technologies in the past, and she discusses how these historical case studies as well as upcoming regulations in the U.K. and the E.U. show a path forward on creating effective regulations for social media. Finally, as a young woman of color tech founder from Harvard, Trisha talks about what her career journey has been like thus far, what advice she would give to students wanting to pursue a career in public interest tech, and how the tech industry itself can become more welcoming to young people from more diverse backgrounds.

Guest bio:

Trisha Prabhu is the 21-year-old Founder & CEO of ReThink, a patented app tackling cyberbullying. She is also an undergraduate student at Harvard University; next year, she will begin postgraduate study at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Trisha's driving vision is to build an Internet that is an empowering, kind space for young people everywhere.

Related links:

ReThink. https://rethinkwords.com/

About the podcast:

How Tech Becomes Law is a weekly public interest tech podcast about technology, public policy, and career advice. We are your co-hosts, Jinyan Zang and Dhruv Gupta. Each episode uncovers insights from leaders in government, business, journalism, and academia to highlight how technology can be built in the public interest. Interviewees discuss how technology can move society forward, what role they play in shaping this, and how students and young professionals can impact the path forward.

We are supported by the Public Interest Tech Lab. Listen to us on your podcast platform of choice. You can find us online at howtechbecomeslaw.org and on social media channels @techbecomeslaw.

Let’s bring the government into the 21st Century. We chat with Jake Kramer, managing partner at FedTech, who tells us more about their work in the dual use technology space. With FedTech, Jake works with the Department of Defense, Department of Education, NASA, NIST, and more to incubate, invest in, and inspire new deep-tech startups who will turn around and sell their tools to the federal government, strengthening technical capabilities across the board. Jake highlights the effort the federal government is putting into innovation, the pace at which development is increasing, and new trends in the space. Finally, Jake highlights his path from serving in the Army to working in entrepreneurship, finance, and innovation.

Guest bio:

Jake Kramer is a managing partner at FedTech, a venture firm at the intersection of entrepreneurship, breakthrough technologies, and mission-driven organizations. Concurrently, Jake serves as a Venture Partner with NextGen Venture Partners, a network driven venture capital firm in Washington, D.C. Before this role, Jake was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs in New York City. Jake began his career as a Captain in the US Army, earning the Bronze Star Medal for his actions leading a unit in the Middle East during a 12-month deployment. Jake received his MBA in Entrepreneurial Management from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and his BBA in Computer Information Systems from Hofstra University.

About the podcast:

How Tech Becomes Law is a weekly public interest tech podcast about technology, public policy, and career advice. We are your co-hosts, Jinyan Zang and Dhruv Gupta. Each episode uncovers insights from leaders in government, business, journalism, and academia to highlight how technology can be built in the public interest. Interviewees discuss how technology can move society forward, what role they play in shaping this, and how students and young professionals can impact the path forward.

We are supported by the Public Interest Tech Lab. Listen to us on your podcast platform of choice. You can find us online at howtechbecomeslaw.org and on social media channels @techbecomeslaw.