Doing Big Things in Policy: It's All White Space

About this episode

The episode provides a guide for technically minded individuals looking to make impactful changes in policy and government.

Wanna do big things? This week, a how-to guide for technically minded people who want to stop posting and start changing things — covering everything from why every globally important problem is "white space." Joining Jordan are Kumar Garg, founder of Renaissance Philanthropy and a veteran of the Obama White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Remco Zwetsloot, co-founder of the Horizon Institute for Public Service, which builds pipelines into government for emerging-tech talent. We discuss… Why $10 million globally on lead remediation tells you everything about how undertalented the world's most important problems are Ambition + humility as the Horizon Fellowship's selection criteria — and why most candidates need to hear the opposite of what they expect "We care meetings" vs. "we decide meetings," the Geithner heuristic for surviving senior government roles The tribal KPIs of the White House — what the Office of Public Engagement, speech writing, and comms actually want from a policy nerd The conscious-incompetence quadrant and why "your job is not to be the expert, your job is to mobilize expertise" The posting-to-policy pipeline, the rise of the individual…

People in this episode

Host: Jordan Schneider

Guests: Kumar Garg, Remco Zwetsloot

Topics covered

• policy
• emerging technology
• government
• public service
• philanthropy

Keywords

• policy change
• emerging tech
• government roles
• public writing
• Horizon Fellowship

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Renaissance Philanthropy, Horizon Institute for Public Service, Horizon Fellowship, Office of Science and Technology Policy, White House, Office of Public Engagement, Substack

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