PiTech Welcomes 2022-2023 VIP Cohort
Cornell Tech’s Public Interest Tech initiative (PiTech) is pleased to welcome its second cohort of Visiting Practitioners (ViPs).
The goal of the program is to foster collaborations with tech leaders from a range of impact-oriented organizations, and engage in conversations around PiTech at Cornell Tech.
ViPs engage with Cornell Tech students and other community members in multiple ways throughout the semester, giving talks, offering office hours, providing feedback on product and business ideas, pursuing their own capstone projects, and informing the direction of PiTech at Cornell Tech.
Afua Bruce is a leading public interest technologist who has spent her career working at the intersection of technology, policy, and society. Her work has spanned the government, non-profit, private, and academic sectors, as she has held senior science and technology positions at DataKind, New America, the White House, the FBI, and IBM. Afua is currently a strategy consultant and executive advisor to organizations developing and expanding responsible innovation projects in the corporate, government, and nonprofit spaces. She is an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
As an If/Then Ambassador, Afua engages in efforts to excite girls to consider STEM careers; she has partnered with GoldieBlox, appeared on CBS's Mission Unstoppable TV show, and is featured in a number of museums around the country. Afua has a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Purdue University and an MBA from the University of Michigan. Her newest book, The Tech That Comes Next: How Changemakers, Technologists, and Philanthropists can Build an Equitable World, describes how technology can advance equity.
Stephan Nicoleau is a Partner at FullCycle, a sustainable infrastructure fund designed to originate and finance over $7B of sustainable real assets. The fund specializes in commercializing innovation and technology that is climate critical in a number of sectors – energy, waste, circularity and agriculture. He is a noted impact investor and brings over 15 years of private sector investing, public-private partnership development and advisory work, including a principal role structuring the efforts to redevelop LaGuardia Airport, a $5B Project.
Stephan also represents FullCycle within GFANZ – the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, representing $130T of commitments made towards climate action, and is a thought leader amongst investors in this sector and beyond. Mr. Nicoleau is on the boards of Project Drawdown, one of the most highly-regarded organizations that has played a pivotal role of identifying climate solutions and strategies that the market can adopt; Future of Cities, an organization designed to steward climate-forward urban development and innovation; and Monument Lab, a public arts organization working to create a public discourse around monuments, public space and memory. He is a frequent keynote speaker, featured writer and thought leader in climate, innovation, and investments.
Jennifer Park is the Executive Director of the Opportunity Accelerator at Results for America. The Opportunity Accelerator partners with government to promote economic mobility and reduce racial disparities, ultimately strengthening the wellbeing of individuals and fostering thriving communities. Since 2015, Jenn developed and led signature programs supporting local government in leveraging data and evidence to accelerate outcomes for residents. She served as a founding member of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities (WWC) initiative, one of the largest-ever philanthropic efforts to enhance cities’ use of data. She created and scaled WWC Certification, the first-ever national standard of excellence for well-managed, data-driven local government. Under her leadership, the program recognized and celebrated 50 local governments for their exceptional use of data to inform policy decisions, allocate funding to improve services, evaluate the effectiveness of programs, and engage residents.
Previously, Jenn managed the expansion of Echoing Green’s Work on Purpose program, an award-winning curriculum designed to help young professionals identify their purpose and put it into action by creating a career with impact. She also supported the Global Fellowship program, providing early seed funding and strategic support to social entrepreneurs to accelerate ideas into impactful social enterprises. Jenn serves as a member of the G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance on Technology Governance Task Force and as a panelist for the National Science Foundation’s Civic Innovation Challenge. She attended Villanova University and the University of Southern California and has a life-long commitment to systems transformation, innovation, and social justice.
Jorge Fontanez is CEO of B Lab U.S. & Canada, part of a global network focused on realizing stakeholder capitalism and whose global mission is to create an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative future benefitting all people and the planet. Jorge's career has been in pursuit of achieving racial equity through economic equity, influenced by the belief that business can be a force for good. Jorge's perspective on business comes from having in-depth experience leading marketing and brand strategy for iconic brands across a variety of sectors including Consumer Packaged Goods, Mining and Minerals, Automotive and Financial Services. In 2015 he founded Marca Studio, an independent strategic marketing consultancy serving entrepreneur founders of color in their early-stage ventures, as well as purpose-driven brands, nonprofits, and foundations. Jorge designed a course on Stakeholders & Marketing and lectures at the Bard MBA in Sustainability Program. He also serves as an advisor to the NYU Center for Sustainable Business and Pacific Community Ventures, and since 2014 he has been a First Mover Fellow of the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program.