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Dr. Alexis Wichowski (she/her)

Professor of Professional Practice & Program Director, MS in Technologies, Columbia University

Alexis Wichowski works, teaches, and writes on technology, government, and power. She currently serves as Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University's School of Professional Studies as well as Program Director at ColumbiaTech, the university's newly relaunched MS and Exec MS programs in Technology Management. Wichowski's public service work focuses on technology in government, digital communications, and tech policy. Prior roles include Deputy Chief Technology Officer for the City of New York, Associate Commissioner for NYC's Department of Veterans' Services, and various roles within the US Department of State and the US Mission to the United Nations. Past life work includes disaster relief, literary translation, media impact research, indexing, coding, theater production, and pretzel vending. Wichowski holds a PhD in Information Science from SUNY Albany and a BA in Chinese from Connecticut College, completed in three years. She published the 2020 book The Information Trade: How Tech Conquers Countries, Challenges Our Rights & Transforms Our Worlds (HarperCollins) and has written for various media outlets, including WIRED, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, TechCrunch, among others.  

Sessions

Learning & Doing

A Sexy Page-Turner about Bureaucracy: How Governments Can Go Big & Save the Day

While “bureaucrat” is sort of a bad word, public servants are the force that run governments – often extremely well. This talk looks at the often-overlooked narrative of government effectiveness, especially when citizens need it most: in times of crisis. By exploring how governments showed up and saved the day during some of the most complex crises of our time, this talk looks at the themes and patterns underlying these successful government interventions and how these lessons might equip future public officials for the crises to come. See More.