Running through the tape: Saying goodbye to the White House
Walking out of this building one last time, there’s so much to feel: pride, sadness, gratitude. Four years ago I came to government in the first class of this new thing called Presidential Innovation Fellows, an experiment that hypothesized you could attract tech talent to government if you gave them a clear mission and meaty problems.
Spoiler alert: the results are magnificent. The Presidential Innovation Fellows are still around, and now there’s 18F and U.S. Digital Service. Turns out tech geeks love serving their country.
At the end of those 6 months I went home, thinking my mission was complete.
Fast forward to my true purpose: Vice President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative to end cancer as we know it. To make a decade’s worth of advances in cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, in five years. I’m incredibly excited about the foundation we’ve laid over the past 11 months to make that happen, and damn proud of the work we shipped, especially trials.cancer.gov. The work, hard and full of roadblocks, was worth it. For myself and all the other cancer fighters out there, and their loved ones and families. Using human centered design and technology to give them hope.
We spoke to hundreds of cancer patients, doctors, researchers, caregivers, advocacy groups, nurses, and others, looking for common threads across their stories and their answers, and ultimately designing solutions with them instead of for them. This pattern’s served us well, this co-designing, as we work with our incredible agency partners across government, and with the public.
It’s been the honor, and privilege, of my lifetime to work these two years in the Obama Administration. There’ll be many tears today and in the weeks to come, because let’s be real, it’s me. But I walk out knowing I left it all on the field. #YesWeCan
Read the Cancer Moonshot Task Force report.
Read Vice President Biden’s Executive Report to President Obama.
