White House names new class of Presidential Innovation Fellows

The White House named its latest round of Presidential Innovation Fellows this week, bringing 11 new minds into the Obama administration as entrepreneurs-in-residence.

Founded in 2012, the program has since brought in 108 fellows who have worked with federal agencies in to help create products and services that improve citizen services and the way the government operates.

Past fellows have gone on to work at tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Twitter or have created their own startups. Others have stayed in government, helping to establish offices like General Service Administration’s 18F or the U.S. Digital Service.

Fellows have contributed to some of the more high-profile technology efforts of the past few years, including the Data.gov launch, the Police Data Initiative, Blue Button and the RFP-EZ platform.

Last August, President Barack Obama made the program permanent within the General Services Administration.

This year’s class was announced earlier than usual — 2015’s class was announced last August — to give fellows a full 12 months of work before the Obama administration ends.

The newest fellows are:

• Amy Wilson: From Washington, D.C., a user-centered product manager who has over 14 years of experience working at the intersection of communications and technology, most recently at Booz Allen Hamilton.
• Mitch Sipus: From Covington, Kentucky, a specialist in urban development post-war reconstruction, urban systems research, and technology design who was an advisor to the governments of Afghanistan and Somalia on urban reconstruction.
• Michael Balint: From San Francisco, California, a software engineer who most recently lead DataFox and was previously at Lockheed Martin, where he coded elegant algorithms for air traffic control, visualized the USA’s energy grid infrastructure, and helped automate melanoma detection.
• Bob Ballance: From Santa Fe, New Mexico, a computer scientist with a history of entrepreneurship, managing collaborative alliances, large-scale, secure, government computing, and academic activities.
• John Trobough: From San Francisco, California, an entrepreneur who most recently served as President and CEO of Narus, an independent subsidiary of The Boeing Company, focused on delivering big data analytics for cyber security to its broad international client base.
• Kyla Fullenwider: From New York, New York, an entrepreneur, educator, and social designer who has worked with the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, UCLA, the Legacy Foundation, PepsiCo, GOOD magazine, and the cities of New York, Los Angeles, and Baltimore.
• Adam Bellow: From New York, New York, an entrepreneur, former English teacher, and expert on educational technology who most recently founded eduClipper, a free web tool focused on helping K-12 students and teachers find, share, and build valid learning experiences.
• Eric Daimler: From San Francisco, California, a computer scientist and venture capitalist who has more than 20 years of experience collaborating between industry, academia, and government.
• Patrick Koppula: From Los Angeles, California, an entrepreneur who most recently served as the Founding Director of City Innovation Ventures and has served in both CEO and COO roles at various startups.
• Justin Koufopoulos: From New York, New York, a product manager, growth hacker, and former Fulbright Scholar who has worked with the U.S. Army, PepsiCo, and Percolate, a marketing software company.
• Wendy Harman: From Washington, D.C., an intrapreneur and strategist who has spent the last eight years building an information sharing ecosystem for disaster services at the American Red Cross.

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