Learn more about our January 2024 Congressional Innovation Fellowship by listening to a recording of one of our info sessions.
We’re looking for talented early- and mid-career technologists who want to make an impact on tech policy at the highest levels. Apply now through August 22 for our January 2024 Fellowships!
Senior Congressional Fellow Sarah Harris has recently joined the office of Senator Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM). Sarah’s career experience spans industry, academic research, & teaching, with specialization in entrepreneurship, internet regulation, digital literacy, & similar areas. In Lujan’s office, Harris will focus on matters of artificial intelligence, connectivity, data privacy, digital services, and modernization.
TechCongress’ team has made the difficult decision to recruit and place only one class of Congressional Innovation Fellows in 2024. This was the result of a great deal of planning and conversation, which began in April 2023 at a team retreat in western Virginia. '
In our conversation during our team retreat, we incorporated post-fellowship feedback from TechCongress fellows and alumni to see how we could adjust the fellowship to better suit the needs of the fellows, the program, and Congress.
We decided to test a new model in 2024, with one larger class of fellows in January, as opposed to the typical two smaller classes a year in January and June.
This decision was rooted in a few key elements: prioritizing the fellowship experience, embracing the critical moment created by the growth of Artificial Intelligence, testing a once-a-year model, and creating space for TechCongress to think about refinement and growth.
Last week, members of the TechCongress team attended a panel discussion regarding the recent “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” (H.R.7521). The panel was hosted by Harvard University’s Institute for Rebooting Social Media (RSM), a three-year “pop-up” research initiative at the Berkman Klein Center that aims to address social media’s most urgent problems. The panel was moderated by RSM visiting scholar Anupam Chander and hosted speakers Jennifer Huddleston (Cato Institute), Ramya Krishnan (Knight First Amendment Institute), Jenna Leventoff (ACLU), & Alan Z. Rozenshtein (University of Minnesota).
Join us in congratulating congressional fellow Lars Schönander in his placement with the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business. In this position, Lars will work alongside the committee on matters pertaining to federal technical procurement, SBIR, and oversight of SBA and small business contracting.
TechCongress is committed to building an ecosystem of diverse, cross-sector technology policy leaders. We are proud to be the first organization in politics to offer a Diversity Referral Award, which, according to Kapor Center Founder Freada Klein, makes “a statistically significant difference in decreasing unfair treatment and increasing retention.” We give $500 to someone who refers a candidate from an underrepresented community to TechCongress’ fellowship program if that candidate is accepted and joins the program. This includes underrepresented people of color, women or nonbinary individuals, and veterans and transitioning service members.
Lack of diversity in Congress stems from many places- especially among staff. In 2023, only “18 percent of top [Congressional] staff for new and returning members are people of color, according to data compiled by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies,” as opposed to people of color comprising of 40 percent of Americans nationwide.
As an organization that places technologists on the Hill, and as an organization dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion, we are committed to using our platform to ensure that the voices of all orientations, races, abilities, socioeconomic status, and genders are represented in government.
We are proud and grateful to give diversity referral awards to the following people who have referred accepted fellows since 2022:
Joshua Kravitz
Victoria Adofoli
Jennie Kam (2023 and 2024)
Marissa Gerchick (who donated their award to Black in AI)
Daniel Schuman
Conor McGlynn
David Cook
James Gimbi
Anoushka Bose
Jonathan Mayer
Victoria Houed
We started our referral award in 2018. Since then, we have awarded a total of $13,500 in awards.
We thank these award-winners– and all of those who have encouraged underrepresented groups to apply to TechCongress’ fellowship– for helping carry out our core values. If you know somebody from an underrepresented demographic who may be interested in TechCongress’ fellowship, please nominate them so that we may continue to foster diversity in government.
Meet Congressional Innovation Fellow Adina Wollner! Adina will be working in the office of Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) for the duration of her fellowship. While there, Adina’s work will focus on cybersecurity issues across national security, workforce and healthcare portfolios, and AI & emerging technologies.
Senior Congressional Innovation Fellow Alex Moix will be joining forces with Senator Mark Robert Warner (D-VA) for the duration of his TechCongress fellowship. As a seasoned security engineer and technical intelligence analyst, Alex will focus on the areas of cybersecurity, technology, and telecommunications during his time in Warner’s office.
Meet Senior Congressional Innovation Fellow Brandon Read. Brandon will be working in the office of Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) for the duration of his fellowship with TechCongress. As a technologist with experience in the private sector, Brandon will be focusing on responsible innovation and shared prosperity, with a focus on platform accountability, digital literacy, market fairness, and the implications of AI on workers and the economy.
Join us in congratulating Congressional Innovation Fellow Ethan Moscot on his recent placement with the office of Representative Andrew Garbarino (R-NY-02). Ethan will work to support efforts in securing critical infrastructure, streamlining cyber regulation, and expanding the national cyber workforce.
Meet Congressional Innovation Fellow Jhonatan Ewunetie. Jhonatan will be working with the House Committee on Appropriations and Sub-Commitee on Transportation, Housing & Urban Development. His work will focus on emerging issues in transportation and HUD, including transportation data and autonomous vehicle regulatory policy.
Since our beginnings in 2015, TechCongress has strived to place technologists in Capitol Hill to positively impact the future of tech policy. With the rapid growth of A.I., social media platforms, cybersecurity threats, and other technological developments, the need for adequate tech policy is greater than ever. The 2024 Congressional Innovation Fellows will apply their technical expertise and insightful backgrounds to support federal policymakers in addressing current challenges and contribute to the creation of a better tomorrow.
We are honored to host such a talented and diverse group of fellows, and will be highlighting each fellow in our cohort in the coming weeks. Stay tuned to learn more about our fellows’ journeys to TechCongress, their areas of expertise, and where they’ll be working during the fellowship.
Jack Cable authored the first in-depth peer-reviewed research into the Conti leaks. We mapped over $80 million in new payments to Conti.
This paper was published in December as part of the APWG Symposium on Electronic Crime Research, for which we received the best paper award.
In February 2022, over 168,000 internal chat messages of the Conti ransomware group were leaked. Conti is one of the most prominent ransomware groups of all time. We sought to build a picture of Conti's (quite profitable) business based on on-chain analysis of Bitcoin payments.
To do so, we manually annotated all 666 Bitcoin addresses present in the leaks based on message context (our team included a native Russian speaker). We tag addresses as either a salary, reimbursement, or ransom payment address.
