Catherine Bracy is a CEO and co-founder of TechEquity, a tax and housing policy advocacy organization whose backers include the

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is an organization established and owned by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan with an investment of 99 percent of the couple's wealth from their Facebook shares over their lifet ...

Early life and education

Bracy studied communication at

Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...

, graduating in 2002. She wanted to be a journalist, but decided against it after completing an internship at

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

in Boston.

Career

Bracy worked as Administrative Director of

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Berkman Center for Internet & Society The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society is a research center at Harvard University that focuses on the study of cyberspace. Founded at Harvard Law School, the center traditionally focused on internet-related legal issues. On May 15, 2008, ...

from 2002 to 2010. She joined the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

, earning a master's degree in public policy in 2011. She worked for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, managing the ''News Challenge'', an innovation competition for journalists. Bracy worked for the Obama administration in 2011 and 2012, heading up the technology field office in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

.She helped to design the technology policy of

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

. In 2013 she joined

Code for America Code for America is a non-partisan, non-political 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2009 to address the widening gap between the public and private sectors in their effective use of technology and design. According to its website, the organiza ...

, looking after international programs. She served as Senior Director for

, building their ''brigade'' to over 50,000 civic tech volunteers. The brigade, an international network that works with local governments to improve cities, were responsible for 64% of the total growth of civic tech in the USA. She became interested in civic hacking, She regularly delivers keynote talks, talking about technology and politics. In 2017 she delivered a

TED talk TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...

''Why good hackers make good citizens'', that has been observed over 800,000 times. She is on the board of directors of the Data & Society Research Institute and the Public Lab. Bracy is co-founder and executive director of TechEquity.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bracy, Catherine Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American founders Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences alumni Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs alumni