Beth Simone Noveck

Beth Simone Noveck directs the Governance Lab (GovLab) and its MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance. She is the Jerry M. Hultin Global Network Professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering.

Her current research focuses on “people-led innovation,” namely the ability of communities and institutions to work together to solve problems more effectively and legitimately.

Currently, she directs programs to promote effective public engagement in lawmaking (CrowdLaw), to help public institutions expert-source and implement innovative solutions to hard problems (Smarter Crowdsourcing) and to train civic leaders and civil servants in how to collaborate with their own communities (Civic Challenges).

A faculty member in Technology, Culture and Society at NYU, Beth teaches the graduate-level Clinic on Governance Innovation: Technology for Social Change and Governing Cities. She also coaches "public entrepreneurs" online through the GovLab Academy, working with passionate individuals to take their public interest projects from idea to implementation and become agents of change in their own communities.

Beth served in the White House as the first United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer and director of the White House Open Government Initiative from 2009 to 2011. UK Prime Minister David Cameron appointed her senior advisor for Open Government.

A graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School, she is a member of the Board of the Center for Open Science and the advisory boards of the Open Contracting Partnership and the EPSRC Centre for Precision Healthcare at Imperial College. She is also a member of the Global Future Council on Technology, Values and Policy for the World Economic Forum. She serves on the Steering Committee for the Collective Intelligence Conferences.

Beth was named one of the “Foreign Policy 100″ by Foreign Policy, one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company and one of the “Top Women in Technology” by Huffington Post.

Beth is the author of Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing (Harvard Univ Press 2015) and Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger and Citizens More Powerful (Brookings 2009) and co-editor of The State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds (NYU Press, 2005). Her next book, Public Entrepreneurship: Training the Next Generation of Public Leader and Problem Solver, will appear with Yale Press in 2018. Her TED talk is here. She tweets @bethnoveck.