Beth Noveck

Biography

Beth Simone Noveck is a professor at Northeastern University with appointments in law, engineering, policy, communications, and computer science. She directs The Governance Lab and the Burnes Center for Social Change. Her work focuses on institutional innovation, as well as the responsible design and use of collective intelligence and AI to strengthen democratic institutions.

Noveck previously served as deputy chief technology officer in the White House under President Barack Obama, where she led the Open Government Initiative. In that role, she helped design policies and platforms — including data.gov and challenge.gov —that increased transparency, participation, and collaboration in government.

She has since served as a senior advisor on open government and digital transformation to US and international leaders, including work with the 10 Downing Street and German Chancellor Merkel’s Digital Council. In New Jersey, she served as founding chief innovation officer and later as the state’s first chief AI strategist, where she led efforts to apply emerging technologies to improve service delivery and public problem-solving.

Noveck founded InnovateUS, which provides philanthropically funded, evidence-based learning for public professionals by public professionals. InnovateUS delivers at-your-own-pace courses and live workshops for learners in 80 countries and across the United States. InnovateUS also studies the impact of upskilling on public sector workers through its Observatory of Public Sector AI. Currently, Noveck is working with global experts in 24 countries to design a new course on AI and public engagement; she is also leading a workshop series on Building and Buying Public AI. 

Noveck also launched AI for Impact, where fellows build open-source AI products with government partners. AI for Impact builds products that strengthen democratic institutions while creating public interest technology jobs for the next generation of problem solvers.

Earlier in her career, Noveck created one of the first platforms for online deliberation (Unchat), as well as and Peer-to-Patent, which connected experts with policymakers to improve public decision-making.

She is the author of multiple books on governance and innovation, including "Reboot: AI and the Race to Save Democracy" (Yale University Press, 2026), "Solving Public Problems" (Yale University Press, 2021) — which was named a Best Book of the Year by Stanford Social Innovation Review — and "Smart Citizens, Smarter State" (Harvard University Press, 2016).

You can read more by Noveck at rebootdemocracy.ai.