The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy is pleased to announce the Fall 2024 cohort of Shorenstein Fellows.
Shorenstein Fellows join the center for a semester or year of research, events, and engagement with HKS students, faculty, and the wider university community.
Alex Smith | Joan Shorenstein Fellow
Alex Smith founded The Cares Family and was CEO from 2011 until 2023. Under his leadership, the organization brought together 30,000 older and younger people to reduce loneliness and attitudinal polarization and to build solidarity across generations in times of change. Through this role, Smith helped shape the world’s first government-level loneliness strategy which was launched by the former UK Prime Minister at a Cares Family event.
Smith was an inaugural Obama Fellow in 2018 and is now Senior Development Advisor, Europe, at the Obama Foundation. In 2023, he spoke at the Foundation’s Democracy Forum on the topic ‘Finding Meaningful Connections In A Digital Age,’ which was streamed around the world, and his work has also appeared in The Guardian, The Times, The Economist, BBC News, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Chicago Tribune and other media around the world.
As a visiting Fellow, Smith will work to aggregate evidence and demonstrate the impact of intergenerational work to reduce loneliness. He will also interview key players in the movement he helped lead to inspire businesses, government, civil society, communities, and individuals in the UK to take action to reduce loneliness, publishing learning about a critical decade of impact. Finally, he will engage with the HKS community to share his research and experiences in the causes of loneliness, its effects, and promising solutions on what has been described in the US, UK and around the world as ‘one of the great challenges of our time.’
Megan Smith | Walter Shorenstein Media & Democracy Fellow
Smith is an award-winning entrepreneur, engineer, and tech evangelist. She is currently CEO & Founder of shift7, board member of MIT, Vital Voices, LA28 Olympics, Thinkof-Us, PlanetRead, Algorithmic Justice League, and Earth Conservation Corp. Smith served as the third U.S. Chief Technology Officer (U.S. CTO) and Assistant to the President from 2014-2017 under President Obama, where she worked on issues from AI, data science and open source, to inclusive economic growth, entrepreneurship and workforce development, structural inequalities, government tech innovation capacity, and criminal justice reform. Championing national networks for capacity building, she co-created all-hands-on-deck initiatives, including public-private programs TechHire, Computer Science for All, The Opportunity Project, AI town halls, and Image of STEM.
Earlier, Smith spent over 11 years as a Vice President at Google leading new business development for global engineering teams. She led acquisitions of Google Earth, Maps, Picasa; championed inclusive advancement, led Google.org adding Google Crisis Response, GoogleforNonProfits, Earth Outreach and Earth Engine; and later co-created WomenTechmakers, and SolveforX.
Today, through shift7, boards and advising, Smith works collaboratively on systemic social, environmental, and economic problems — finding opportunities to scout and scale promising solutions and solution makers and engage proven tech-forward, open, shareable practices to drive direct impact, together.
During her fellowship, Smith will be collaboratively conducting research on the integration of emerging and long-standing technologies, their impacts on society, cross-fluency opportunities and emerging potential solutions for scale across sectors – including civic and civil society. As part of her research, Megan will engage with faculty members and students across the University through workshops, cross-pollination engagements, and training.
Mark MacGann | Public Interest Tech Fellow
Mark MacGann has thirty years’ experience at the nexus of business and government, having served in global senior executive and management roles for some of the world’s most successful corporations (Uber, NYSE, VEON, Nokia). Until recently, he served as a United Nations Commissioner for Sustainable Development.
In early 2022, he embarked on a life-changing journey with some of the world’s most experienced investigative journalists, and since then he has been known as the whistleblower behind the Uber Files. He is currently working on a number of writing and academic projects, continues to advocate for greater transparency in lobbying, and stronger social protection for millions of so-called platform, or gig workers.
While a fellow at the Public Interest Tech Lab, housed at the Shorenstein Center, MacGann will research the intersection of technology, labor practices, and regulatory frameworks within the gig economy, and explore potential policy reforms to ensure fair labor practices and enhanced accountability within the tech industry. This comprehensive study will provide valuable insights for policymakers, industry leaders, and academics alike, contributing to the ongoing discourse on creating a more equitable and transparent gig economy.
This new cohort will join existing Shorenstein Fellows Keri Putnam, Julia Angwin, Brandi Collins-Dexter, Taylor Holden, and Ben Monnie.
To learn more about the Shorenstein Fellowship program and apply to be a fellow visit shorensteincenter.org/joan-shorenstein-fellowship.
