CivicActions is a fully remote digital services firm that helps U.S. federal, state, and local government agencies modernize the technology behind public services. Founded in 2004 by Henry Poole and Aaron Pava, the company pairs free and open-source software - especially Drupal - with agile delivery, DevSecOps, human-centered design, and accessibility expertise to rebuild legacy government websites and platforms. Guided by the values of Balance, Openness, and Care, CivicActions has served agencies including Veterans Affairs, the FCC, the National Science Foundation, and the State of Georgia while contributing heavily back to the open-source communities its work depends on.
Outreach Grid is an Irvine, California software company building a unified platform that helps cities, counties, service agencies, outreach workers, and law enforcement collaborate to understand and end homelessness. Founded in 2016 by Tiffany Pang-Cadengo and John Cadengo under parent company Appledore, its coordinated-entry system spans street outreach, case management, shelter and bed matching, housing navigation, and Point-in-Time counts - turning fragmented field notes into shared, actionable data used by more than 23 municipalities across the United States.
MD Ally is a New York-based health-tech company that plugs telehealth directly into the 911 system. Founded in 2018 by Shanel Fields, the daughter of a volunteer EMT, the platform adds a 'virtual response tier' so dispatchers can route non-emergency callers to the right care instead of automatically sending an ambulance and an ER trip. By partnering with public-safety agencies and insurance payors, MD Ally cuts unnecessary emergency costs while connecting patients to telehealth, mental health and social services.
Jase Wilson grew up in rural Missouri, earned a Master of City Planning from MIT, and has spent two decades trying to wire America together. After helping land Google Fiber's first network in Kansas City, founding and ultimately losing Neighborly - a civic fintech built on municipal bonds - he pivoted to Ready.net in 2019. Now, as founder and CEO, he runs a Y Combinator-backed vertical SaaS platform that helps state broadband offices manage billions in federal BEAD grants and track sub-grantee performance, with $14.6M in total funding and a team of 62.
Jay Nath is Co-CEO and co-founder of Authorium, an AI-powered government procurement and document workflow platform that processes over $50 billion in government transactions. Before Authorium, he served as San Francisco's first Chief Innovation Officer for nearly a decade, where he created landmark programs including Startup in Residence (STIR), Civic Bridge, and Open311 — the nation's first read-write open data standard for 311 systems, adopted by over 50 cities worldwide. Recognized by the Obama White House as a Champion of Change, Nath has spent his career bridging the gap between Silicon Valley agility and the scale of public sector impact.

John Lilly is a Venture Partner at Greylock Partners and former CEO of Mozilla Corporation, where he oversaw Firefox's growth from 7 million to 450+ million users. A Stanford-trained engineer turned VC, he has backed transformative companies including Dropbox, Figma, Instagram, and Discord, while staying rooted in civic technology as Board Chair of Code for America. He currently serves as a lecturer at Stanford GSB and Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School.

Katie Harbath is the founder and CEO of Anchor Change and Chief Global Affairs Officer at Duco Experts, widely known as the 'election whisperer to the tech industry' (Foreign Policy). After a decade at Facebook building the global elections policy team from scratch - eventually managing 60 people across 40+ countries - she left in 2021 to launch her own consulting firm and newsletter. Her weekly Substack 'Anchor Change' and podcast help readers and clients navigate the chaos at the intersection of technology, politics, and democracy, guided by her signature philosophy: panic responsibly.

Sheba Najmi is a Stanford-trained UX leader, civic technologist, and founder of Code for Pakistan — the country's first civic tech nonprofit. Over two decades she has shaped digital products for hundreds of millions of users (Yahoo Mail, LinkedIn, FreeWill) while simultaneously running a parallel mission: using open-source technology to make Pakistani government services work for ordinary people. Her work has served 2.1 million citizens, trained 600 government officials, and opened 6,000 public datasets. In 2024 she received the HUM Women Leaders Award for her contributions to civic innovation in Pakistan.