Introducing the Paragon Policy Fellowship Newsletter
Keep up with Paragon's latest cohort updates, tech policy opportunities, and more!
We’re excited to launch the Paragon Policy Fellowship Newsletter!
The purpose of this monthly newsletter is to foster a network for current fellows, fellowship alumni, prospective applicants, and Paragon community partners to continue engaging with Paragon’s programming.
In this month’s edition, we have:
Spring ‘24 Cohort Wrap-Up
Project Feature
Fellow Spotlights: Sofia Rodriguez & Minh Pham
Speaker Spotlights
Spring ‘24 Closing Thoughts
Summer ‘24 Kickoff
Tech Policy Reading List
Job Opportunity Board
Spring ‘24 Cohort Wrap-Up
Our spring fellows celebrated their final accomplishments at Paragon’s Closing Ceremony on June 15, 2024, which featured a keynote speech from former Code For America CEO Abhi Nemani, updates from Paragon’s executive board, and wrap-up presentations from Paragon fellows. Our six teams from Boston, MA; St. Louis, MO; Lebanon, NH; the state of Georgia; San Jose, CA (Government Team), and San Jose, CA (Public Team) did a wonderful job researching and producing policy deliverables for our local government stakeholders. Their work will be displayed on our website soon, so stay tuned!
We also had the pleasure of hosting multiple speakers throughout the fellowship, and would like to extend our warmest thank yous to US Digital Corps Co-Founder Chris Kuang, Mozilla AI Governance Technical Lead Nik Marda, Brown University CS Professor Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Santa Clara County Senior Policy Advisor Brian Pascal, US Senate Tech Fellow Julia Pan, Georgetown CSET Analysis Director Igor Mikolic-Torreira, Penn Center for Technology, Innovation, & Competition Director Gus Hurwitz, Purdue Governance & Responsible AI Lab Co-Director Daniel Schiff, and former Code for America CEO Abhi Nemani, for sharing their wonderful insights throughout our speaker series.
For those who were part of the Spring ‘24 Cohort, please join our alumni Linkedin group to stay connected!
Project Feature: San Jose (Public Team)
Led by Stanford Electrical Engineering Graduate Student Favour Nerrise, the San Jose Public Team had the opportunity to present their project, “Mitigating the Misuse of AI-generated Content in San José’s Public Input Process,” in-person at San Jose City Hall to stakeholders in government, supported by San Jose Digital Privacy Officer Albert Gehami. Their work focused on identifying existing strategies to identify false AI-generated content in functions such as city comments and developing recommendations to mitigate these risks.
Fellow Spotlights
We’re beyond excited to spotlight two fellows from the Spring 2024 Cohort, both of whom shared their experiences working in the fellowship and have continued their time in Paragon as board members! Learn about Sofia and Minh as they walk us through their tech policy journeys and what they’ve learned as Paragon fellows.
Sofia Rodriguez - Boston Fellow
Hunter College second-year Sofia Rodriguez (they/them) has harbored a spark for tech policy, global governance, and intersectional human rights since high school, when they’d first joined Encode Justice — a youth movement for human-centered AI — in its early beginnings.
And Rodriguez has not stopped since.
“I will never stop reading about tech policy and my bank account is truly suffering because of it,” they said, grinning. “[Earlier today], I just walked into Barnes and Noble and spent $25 on a new hardcover edition over some new researcher having a new perspective on tech policy from their specific industry, whether it be business or cybersecurity…”
Minh Pham - San Jose Fellow
Fourteen years ago, UCLA post-baccalaureate student Minh Pham (he/him) and his family immigrated to the United States from Vietnam as refugees — all without speaking a drop of English. Now, Pham is prepping for both the MCAT and LSAT in anticipation of Med School and Law School, hoping to transform the healthcare policy landscape through both the medical and legal systems.
“When our family first came, we would go to the local hospitals and legal clinics to get help and free resources for every chance at a fighting opportunity,” Pham said. “That’s how my parents found jobs, and how we were able to stay in America.”
Speaker Spotlight
Former Code for America CEO Abhi Nemani closed off our Spring ‘24 cohort with wonderful advice about next steps after the Paragon Policy Fellowship, including how to maximize impact in government, continue building a portfolio in the government/policy space, and leaving the fellowship with new ways of thinking and problem solving.
Thank you, Abhi, for sharing your insights with our fellows!
Spring ‘24 Closing Thoughts
Paragon’s inaugural Spring 2024 cohort transformed an idea to a national movement, helping university students across the country gain hands-on experience with policy at the local and state level.
The team is super thankful for all of Paragon’s supporters and volunteers who made our first iteration possible, as well as the hard work put forth by project leads and fellows throughout the past three months. We would especially like to give a big shoutout to Chris Kuang, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, and Nik Marda for their unwavering support since the very beginning.
Summer ‘24 Kickoff
Our Summer 2024 Cohort kicked off this week with our Opening Ceremony on June 20 and our Policy Bootcamp on June 22! Our fellows hail from 27 different universities across 12 states, and the cohort will feature seven teams across six governments. Paragon’s returning government partners include the state of Georgia; Lebanon, NH; St. Louis, MO; and San Jose, CA. We’re also excited to announce new partnerships with Santa Clara County and California Health and Human Services.
During the Opening Ceremony, our fellows had the wonderful opportunity to listen to Olivia Zhu, the Assistant Director for AI Policy at the White House, impart her career advice and tech policy insights. Saturday’s bootcamp also featured curriculum developed by our newest Policy team, who will continue to support fellows throughout the fellowship.
Note: For students who haven’t had the chance to participate in the Paragon Policy Fellowship, fall applications will open mid-August. We encourage all college & university students to apply. More details will be sent out in upcoming newsletter editions.
Fiscal Sponsorship
As of June 14, Paragon is officially fiscally sponsored by the Federation of American Scientists! FAS is a global science policy think tank, initially founded in 1946 to educate the public on nuclear disarmament after the Manhattan Project. Not only will Paragon receive FAS support in future grant applications, this sponsorship also symbolizes an alignment between Paragon and the FAS’s shared goal of democratizing the policymaking process to tackle some of the biggest science and tech policy challenges of our time. Thank you FAS — we look forward to our future partnership!
Tech Policy Reading List
Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology by Anu Bradford
Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy of the Future by Hemant Taneja
AI Perspectives Newsletter by Google DeepMind
Job Opportunity Board
The Brookings Institution’s Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative (AIET) is looking for a Research & Events Intern for Fall 2024! Apply by June 30, 2024.
The Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation is looking for Fall 2024 interns! Apply by June 30, 2024.
The Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI) is currently hiring for a one-year Research Scholar and a Research Fellow position offering a two-year renewable contract. Apply by July 7, 2024.
Apply for the Brennan Center’s Fall 2024 internships!
— Contributed by Carolyn Wang, Kaitlyn Cui, and Sam Jung. Have feedback or newsletter ideas? Fill out this form, and we’ll get back to you!
