Jeremy: Technology, Policy, and Innovation Specialist

Looking through Jeremy’s Strikingly page is not only impressive — it’s intimidating. With an MA from Georgetown, his own consulting business, international work experience in Israel, and a variety of roles in the tech space under his belt, not to mention a whole slew of speaking engagements and fellowships, it’s easy to feel like he’s had it all figured out and has had a plan all along.

But is that ever truly the case?

The truth is, it’s Jeremy’s career trajectory that I find most inspiring. He’s leveraged opportunities, connections, and networks to connect the dots and create a path for himself. He’s taken on hands-on projects and relied on supportive communities as a means of exploring, all while understanding the value and takeaways from each step in his journey.

In a Nutshell: Jeremy’s Career Path

Jeremy had a knack for computers at a young age. He found coding interesting — in a philosophical way — and, through experiences with gaming and web development, became inspired by the potential for technology to shape the world we live in.

As a Computer Science major, however, he felt boxed in by the strict nature of his curriculum. He loved the math and science component, but the theoretical classes just didn’t seem quite as practical or interesting. What’s more, there was no variety — all his classes were with the same students and the computer science department at his university only had 3 professors, so Jeremy felt the program lacked the flexibility to offer greater depth or meaning beyond a standardized curriculum.

“I knew it didn’t appeal to me, but I didn’t have the vocabulary to express what did — I just knew it wasn’t this.”

Jeremy leveraged opportunities outside the classroom to explore other interests. He ended up joining the Student Senate where he was part of a cross-departmental committee that tackled tech and IT issues on campus. When he found out they were slated to build a media center on campus, he jumped at the opportunity to get involved.

“Media — it just clicked for me. I had done music in high school but never on a computer. And I started to run with this idea. I want to make this happen. I want to help instill media literacy and media production capabilities on campus. I saw what people hadn’t yet seen — this stuff was going to become central to everything we did. Tech was going to play a part in everyone’s career.”

Jeremy led the charge for the campus media center — establishing a subcommittee and writing a big report that was approved by the Student Senate and brought to the college’s academic committee — and loved the process of planning and consensus building required in such an undertaking.

Jeremy’s next career clue surfaced when Vint Cerf — considered one of the founding fathers of the internet — came to Jeremy’s university as a guest speaker to discuss policy planning and the social impact of technology. And that’s when the lightbulb struck:

“You can get paid for thinking about tech issues?”

Jeremy realized that tackling technology questions that truly interested him — “what does it mean when technology is out in the world affecting real people and their real lives?” — could be the basis for a career. Instead of studying and creating tech itself, he could contribute to society by studying tech’s implications in the world, and make a living in the process.

“That’s what set the stage. I didn’t get out of school knowing exactly what I wanted, but it definitely pushed me in the right direction.”

After college Jeremy returned to New York City where he worked as a programmer in a few different startups, but having graduated following the 2008 crash, his career had trouble getting any real traction.

A friend was attending Georgetown University’s graduate program in Communication, Culture & Technology (CCT), and while the program piqued Jeremy’s interest, he felt his undergrad GPA would stop him from getting in the door.

Enter Mike Nelson, Al Gore’s former tech policy advisor and adjunct professor at Georgetown’s CCT program. Jeremy met him during his trip, and the two slowly developed a relationship over the following years. Eventually, Mike sat down with Jeremy and directly encouraged him to apply to the program. While Jeremy was unsure if the program would be an exact fit, he chose to take the leap anyway. As Jeremy says,

“Sometimes we need to take a step forward just to get unstuck, even if we don’t completely resonate with it.”

Jeremy was excited that the program had only 2 required courses (out of a 13 course program) so he felt really free to expand, explore, and figure things out. The program was also much more well-suited to his interests, as it highlighted technology, society and interdisciplinarity. Half the courses he took were in subjects he didn’t even know existed before. He has written a more in-depth review of the program here.

“CCT is a great example of how school can actually be wonderful — when it actually trusts you, the student — to explore, figure things out and make connections instead of spoon feeding you everything it thinks is important.”

Jeremy came out of school committed to pursuing a career in technology policy — maybe even at the doctoral level — but wanted some additional work experience in the policy space first.

However, as any aspiring policy wonk in DC is sadly familiar with, Jeremy struggled to find a job despite his degree. Thanks to recommendations from fellows in StartingBloc (an awesome social impact fellowship program and community in which Jeremy and I both take part!), Jeremy landed his next two gigs:

The first job in government, which he got thanks to a fellow who helped to run the Presidential Fellows Program at the time. This was his first government gig, but he felt stifled and frustrated by the bureaucracy and lack of decision-making power in his role.

The second was Baltimore Corps, a social impact fellowship dedicated to improving systemic issues in the city of Baltimore. Working as a data analyst for local city government wasn’t an obvious fit initially, as the role wasn’t relevant to his career aspirations in technology or policy, but he got paid to learn the coding language R (which would prove to come in handy later) and had time left over to focus on personal development, confidence building, and finding balance in his life. Thanks to that newfound sense of confidence, Jeremy even made his speaking debut at TEDxHerndon with a talk on using futures studies to predict the future.

Baltimore Corps was a definite turning point in Jeremy’s career:

“After that experience I felt like I had gone from 0 to 60 on my career. I hadn’t coded this extensively since I graduated. I realized I did actually like this part of things and I am good at this. I was able to start climbing up the mountain again.”

A Birthright trip to Israel in his early 20s sparked an interest in Israel and Jewish heritage, so after Baltimore Corps, Jeremy decided to return as part of the Masa (Hebrew for “journey”), an internship program in Israel for Jews from around the world. While there, Jeremy joined the Israel Government Fellows Program, and while he was initially supposed to work for the Israeli Ministry of Science, he ended up joining a relatively new organization, Start-Up Nation Central.

“They had a whole database of Israeli VC and startups, so I told them that I just learned this data analysis language (R). I used it to do many different analyses, and quickly became the guy who knew his way around the data. This skill that I had learned came in handy in a job that really felt more meaningful to me.”

After a year in Israel, Jeremy is back in the U.S. gearing up for his next challenge: a PhD. This fall, he will be starting his PhD in Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where his initial project will focus on technology forecasting through the university’s Science, Technology and Innovation Policy lab. Jeremy is extremely excited for this next step, especially since he didn’t think such an opportunity would be within his reach when he graduated from college nearly a decade ago. Jeremy feels ready to take this next step — but he’s glad he waited.

“I needed to work all these things out personally and professionally and now to lock this thing in as the career for me, I need to play at that level and get my PhD.”

In the meantime, Jeremy uses his R expertise to do independent consulting work analyzing data-based trends for clients.

Adding It Up: Confirming My Happiness Formula Assumptions

Jeremy’s journey confirms all four of my assumptions about finding meaningful work:

Hands-on Opportunities

• Building out the committee and proposal for his university’s media center let Jeremy test out planning and consensus building skills that are essential for any budding policy wonk.
• Essentially creating his own course of study at Georgetown gave Jeremy the opportunity to combine topics of interest and test out new topics he didn’t know existed prior to the program (though he laments the lack of hands on consultancies coordinated by the university itself).

A Supervisor’s Faith

• Getting to take the reins and implement the use of R at Startup Nation Central helped place Jeremy as “the guy in the know.”

An Inspiring Mentor

• Vint Cerf helped Jeremy envision a possible career path in the tech policy space.
• Mike Nelson gave Jeremy the push to pursue graduate school.
• Jeremy’s Uncle was the chief software architect of a big government agency, and provided Jeremy with a lot of help, mentorship and advice while he was growing up.

A Supportive Community

• A family that does for others: Jeremy’s desire to work in the social impact space — “to fight for the little guy” — was most likely inspired by the fact that almost everyone in his extended family worked at some sort of job that helped people. His upbringing in a progressive community meant that his family had the capacity to do for others and could build a career doing so — likely inspiring Jeremy to persevere and build his own.
• Starting Bloc: Not only did Jeremy land his first two jobs out of grad school thanks to Starting Bloc fellows, SB was the first time Jeremy had found a community where working towards positive impact was a given, and introduced him to the concepts of social innovation and B Corps. (Starting Bloc is also how I found Jeremy and we even got to chat!)
• Platforms to talk about his work and tell his story. Including this one, Arc Benders, Defining the Next Decade, etc.

Jeremy’s Tips for Career Shifters and People that Feel Stuck:

Go to where the action is:

“If you want to learn about a career, put yourself in the place where they’re [people in that career] are likely to be. I knew going to visit DC for the CCT program would give me some additional clarity — so I did. If you can’t physically go somewhere, go on the internet, youtube, listen to talks, take online classes. I was reading this thing yesterday — there’s always luck involved in anyone’s long term career path — but ‘creating luck’ is about putting yourself in the path where these things are likely to happen. Go to where it’s happening — for anyone you want to meet or anything you’re hoping to learn about.”

Ask for more at work:

“I might suggest looking at your life and seeing — where can you push your boundaries. Or if you’re at work and don’t like what you’re doing, ask if you can take on new projects.

At Baltimore Corps, I told them that I was happy learning R, but that I’d like to learn another skill as well. They accommodated me and understood that this is not just a job, this is me developing myself.”

Leverage technology and DO something:

“One thing that I appreciate about the world today is that people are realizing how much change they can affect — just by starting something on twitter, or organizing a movement, — and the barriers between us and them are more permeable than they’ve ever been. Who knows how thick they even were to begin with?

There isn’t really any reason — yes there are different situations, various levels of privilege — but in terms of what someone is capable of, there isn’t a lot standing in one’s way, if one goes slowly. Yeah you’re not going to change careers tomorrow, but if you want to do a small thing — there’s nothing preventing you from doing one small thing today and small things tomorrow — all of which can lead you to the answer you’re looking for.”