Tomicah Tillemann Presents: Redesigning the Relationship between Tech & Society
Introduction
Today, I am super excited to have Tomicah as the first special guest speaker of the Liven Builds Guest Series, who is graciously joining us despite the challenging time difference between Washington & Australia. Tomicah is a visionary, good friend and amazing dad to 5 children. His relentless vision for harnessing open source technology to create a more democratised, decentralised world within the next 10 years is inspiring.
Tomicah's background
Dr. Tomicah Tillemann is the Executive Director of the Digital Impact and Governance Initiative (DIGI) at New America, where his team develops and deploys next-generation open source technology platforms to transform the way governments deliver value for citizens.
It is very rare to encounter people who are as capable across a range of disciplines as Tomicah, who combines expertise in tech innovation with a deep understanding of policy.
Tomicah has spent years working at the highest levels of Washington to redesign the relationship between technology and society. That goal was important before the pandemic, but over the last 18 months, as digital networks have become the primary conduit for daily life, it has now become an imperative.
He has had the privilege collaborating with public sector leaders including @JoeBiden @HillaryClinton @ABlinken @JakeSullivan @JohnKerry and @NewAmerica to make progress towards this goal.
To further this vision, Tomicah has recently joined as a partner to Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) who are investing in the internet and future that we all deserve — a digital space with more opportunity, creativity, accountability, and democracy.
The technologies a16z support and nurture will be more decentralized, democratized, and open. As they work to create these tools, few things will be more important than forging the right relationship between policy and technology - Tomicah's specialty.
Tomicah is dedicated to realizing this vision, and will be working to create the digital infrastructure we need to power more effective institutions, and develop solutions to some of humanity's foundational challenges.
A16z are known as one of the most influential and successful venture firms of all time, having nurtured the success of Slack, Lyft, Stripe, Coinbase, Github, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and Airbnb among more than 500 other companies. Read more about a16z's new $2.2 billion crypto fund here: https://a16z.com/2021/06/24/crypto-fund-iii/