The White House Frontiers Conference will bring together some of the world’s leading innovators in Pittsburgh to discuss how investing in science and technology frontiers will help improve lives, including progress and investments that are keeping America and Americans on the cutting edge of innovation.

The Conference will include programming featuring five “Frontiers” of innovation:

• Personal frontiers in health care innovation and precision medicine;
• Local frontiers in building smart, inclusive communities, including through investments in open data and the Internet of things;
• National frontiers in harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence, including data science, machine learning, automation, and robotics to engage and benefit all Americans;
• Global frontiers in accelerating the clean energy revolution and developing advanced climate information, tools, services, and collaborations; and
• Interplanetary frontiers in space exploration, including our journey to Mars.

Additional themes will cut across the conference’s programming, including the importance of cross-sector collaboration for solving difficult challenges; education innovation to develop skills for Americans at all levels; job creation across these sectors; and equity, to ensure all Americans have access to these innovations and benefit from advances in these frontiers.

Over the past 8 years, President Obama has committed his Administration to reinvigorating and broadening participation in the American scientific enterprise through a strong commitment to basic and applied research, innovation, modernization, and education. As part of delivering on this commitment, we look forward to celebrating progress to date and convening an inspiring cross-sector, action-oriented discussion about the path forward at the White House Frontiers Conference in October.

To learn more about the conference please visit FrontiersConference.org.

FrontiersConference.org

To nominate an innovator on the frontiers of science, technology, and new approaches to attend, please fill out the form below.

To recognize the wide-ranging diversity of innovation taking place across the United States, we are seeking nominations for a small number of spots to attend the Conference. Nominate a leader, colleague, role model, or yourself by completing the form below. Please provide as much context on the nominee’s contribution to the frontiers of science, technology, and innovation as possible.

THE NEED   |   STUDENTS   |   EDUCATORS   |   COMMUNITIES   |   COMMITMENTS   |   ENGAGE

CS For All

Computer Science for All is the President’s bold new initiative to empower all American students from kindergarten through high school to learn computer science and be equipped with the computational thinking skills they need to be creators in the digital economy, not just consumers, and to be active citizens in our technology-driven world. Our economy is rapidly shifting, and both educators and business leaders are increasingly recognizing that computer science (CS) is a “new basic” skill necessary for economic opportunity and social mobility.

An Investment in Knowledge Pays the Best Interest

Benjamin Franklin

CS for All builds on efforts already being led by parents, teachers, school districts, states, and private sector leaders from across the country.  

The President’s initiative calls for:

• $4 billion in funding for states and $100 million directly for school districts in his forthcoming Budget to expand K-12 CS by training teachers, expanding access to high-quality instructional materials, and building effective regional partnerships.
• $135 million in Computer Science funding to become available starting this year from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Corporation for National And Community Service (CNCS)
• Expanding access to prior NSF supported programs and professional learning communities through their CS10k Initiative that led to the creation of more inclusive and accessible CS curriculum including Exploring CS and Advanced Placement (AP) CS Principles among others.
• Involving even more governors, mayors, and education leaders to help boost CS following the leadership of states like Delaware, Hawaii, Washington, Arkansas, and more than 30 school districts that have already begun to expand CS opportunities.
• Engaging CEOs, philanthropists, creative media, technology, and education professionals to deepen their CS commitments.  More than 50 organizations are making commitments, learn more and get involved and make a commitment here.

Fact Sheet   Watch the launch

The Need for CS For All

Last year, there were more than 600,000 high-paying tech jobs across the United States that were unfilled, and by 2018, 51 percent of all STEM jobs are projected to be in computer science-related fields. Computer science and data science are not only important for the tech sector, but for so many industries, including transportation, healthcare, education, and financial services.

Parents increasingly recognize this need — more than nine of 10 parents surveyed say they want computer science taught at their child’s school. However, by some estimates, just one quarter of all the K-12 schools in the United States offer high-quality computer science with programming and coding and 22 states still do not allow it to count towards high school graduation, even as other advanced economies are making it available for all students.

Wide disparities exist even for those who do have access to these courses. In addition to course access challenge, media portrayals, classroom curriculum materials, unconscious bias and widely-held stereotypes exacerbate the problem and discourage many of our students from taking these courses. For example, in 2015, only 22 percent of students taking the AP Computer Science exam were girls, and only 13 percent were African-American or Latino students. These statistics mirror the current makeup of some of America’s largest and more innovative tech firms in which women compose less than one-third of their technical employees, and African-Americans less than 3 percent. We can do better!

Tech careers are exciting, fun, high-impact, and collaborative as well as being critical for our economy. We want all Americans to have the opportunity to be part of these teams. CS For All will help make that a reality and ensure every student has access to Computer Science in their classrooms at all levels.  

CS for Students

When it comes to computer science, we can all be students and President Obama led the way as our CS Student Coder-in-Chief when he became the first President to write a line of code himself. His first line of code was moveForward<100> and that’s what CS for All is all about: moving forward together. Who taught him to code? A middle-school student named Adrianna from Newark, New Jersey, who took a computer science course at her school.

If the President can start learning computer science, so can you! We know you need the basic tools to make it possible, including teachers, infrastructure, and Wi-Fi. Thanks to the President’s ConnectED initiative, we’re well on our way making that happen, closing the connectivity divide by in schools by over half — empowering 20 million more students with high-speed broadband, and enlisting over 2,000 school districts in the cause. And in order to make sure youth have pathways into the workforce and that adults have access to these skills, the President launched TechHire, which has expanded into 35 cities, states, and rural areas.

Student Spotlights

Grace Clark is a sophomore at International High School in New Orleans, Louisiana and interns with Operation Spark, which offers free technology training and coding courses to young people in New Orleans. Grace worked with the New Orleans Police Department on a policing data event where she taught New Orleans Police Chief Michael Harrison to write his first line of code. She also teaches coding to children at Arthur Ashe Elementary and attended the 2014 Essence Festival to represent inner city youth in coding and technology.

Christina Li is a senior at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Macomb, Michigan She is the Vice President of Controls for her FIRST robotics team, the ThunderChickens. Christina also created Hello World, a week-long computer science day camp for 30 middle school girls to learn how to code robots, apps, websites, and games in the hopes of reducing the gender gap in computer science.

Angelica Willis is a computer science student at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, North Carolina. She used her computer science skills to help NASA develop ecological forecasting models using satellites to support reforestation in Rwanda. She now spearheads an initiative to develop an entrepreneurship, design, and CS-centered Maker Space for at-risk youth and underrepresented communities in Greensboro.

See all the White House Computer Science Champions of Change here.

CS for Educators

The field of computer science education has come a long way in just a few years.  With support from NSF, new high school courses like Exploring Computer Science and AP Principles of Computer Science have been designed to be more inclusive and accessible to all students and other courses and programs are designed for early elementary schools. NSF also funded a middle school and freshman focused course called “Bootstrap” and a wide-range of curriculums have emerged to teach computer science and computational thinking in elementary, middle, and high school.

Because CS is an active and applied field of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) learning that allows students to engage in hands-on, real-world interaction with key math, science, and engineering principles, it gives students opportunities to be creators ­— not just consumers — in the digital economy, and to be active citizens in our technology-driven world. CS can also help foster computational thinking skills that are relevant to many disciplines and careers, such as breaking a large problem into smaller ones, recognizing how new problems relate to problems already solved, setting aside details of a problem that are less important, and identifying and refining the steps needed to reach a solution. CS also complements the President’s Nation of Makers initiative, which focuses on the growing democratization of the hardware and software tools needed to design and make just about anything.

As a teacher, school leader, or superintendent, you can help expand CS for All in many different ways. For example you can:

• Access the CNCS AmeriCorps Computer Science program to develop your own CS skills.
• Join the CS Teacher Institutes or the 21st Learners and Coders programs offered by the US Department of Education
• Engage with professional learning communities like 100kin10 to find resources and colleagues, including those who have created computer science and computational thinking experiences within many K-12 subjects.
• Apply for NSF funding or partner with researchers to expand quality CS offerings.
• Participate with the Future Ready Schools initiative to help transition your district to next generation thinking, including active hands-on learning approaches.
• Start an afterschool CS club, robotics program, maker space, or science fair.
• Learn more about the President’s ConnectED initiative and the private sector commitments to increase connectivity.

Teacher Spotlight:

Andrea Chaves is a Spanish and computer science teacher and creative director at the Young Women’s Leadership School in Astoria, New York where she has integrated digital education and coding into all of her classes, including Spanish. Andrea also leads a group of students known as the “Tech Crew,” composed of filmmakers, graphic designers, coders, website designers, and project managers. Under Andrea’s guidance, these young women collaborate to solve problems around school like teaching students about recycling through coding educational video games.

James Forde is a 7th grade science teacher at Cloonan Middle School in Stamford, Connecticut. Jim was the Stamford Public Schools' Teacher of the Year. He has planed  a city wide STEM festival, providing STEM professional development, and curates the popular STEM Education Twitter handle @stemnetwork. He also sponsors the Computer Coding Club and a 3D printing club at Cloonan Middle School.

Andreas Stefik, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. For the last decade, he has been creating technologies that make it easier for people, including those with disabilities, to write computer software. With grants from NSF, he established the first national educational infrastructure for blind or visually impaired students to learn computer science. He is the inventor of Quorum, the first evidence-oriented programming language. 

See all the White House Computer Science Champions of Change here.

CS For Communities and Policy Makers

States and cities have been leaders in the movement to expand CS education. In 2014, responding to the President’s call to action, more than 60 school districts committed to give more of their students an opportunity to learn CS. In just the past year, both Republican and Democratic state leaders have championed ambitious CS efforts, and New York City announced an aggressive 10-year plan to expand CS opportunities to all one-million of its students. Today, leaders at the state and local levels are announcing new and expanded commitments to expand CS, including:

• The State of Delaware is expanding CS education to 13 additional high schools, and launching an online CS course for all students.
• The Hawaii State Department of Education’s will expand its efforts to integrate CS throughout K-12. 
• More than 30 K-12 public school districts, representing more than one million students, are committing to expand CS education.
• Broward County Public Schools,the nation’s sixth largest public school system, is announcing a goal for every student to have some exposure to CS while in school.

Make a commitment

Community Spotlight: Chattanooga, Tennessee

The Chattanooga community has worked together to create an ecosystem for youth to learn computer science skills to be prepared for future technology-infused industries. Cordell Carter is the Chief Executive Officer of TechTown Foundation, Inc., a next-generation learning center that offers programs for children of all skill levels from ages 7 to 17. TechTown’s approach aims to give youth hands-on learn-it-by-doing-it experience, allowing kids to discover, learn, and explore the limitless possibilities of their imaginations.

Policymaker Spotlights:

Jane Margolis is a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she investigates why few women and students of color have learned computer science. She and her collaborators, with support from the National Science Foundation, created Exploring Computer Science, a high school curriculum and teacher professional development program committed to reaching all students, especially those in underserved communities and schools, which now exists across the nation, including in seven of the largest school districts.

Karen North is a retired computer science and math teacher from Houston, Texas and has advocated for Computer Science education since 1985. She has fought to keep computer science certification for teachers and played an integral part in increasing programming and computational thinking in the K-8 Texas math standards. She now serves as a Code.org affiliate and a Code Buddy for Spring Branch Independent School District.

A growing list of K-12 district leaders are committing to support the President’s vision of expanded computer science curricula for K-12 students. See the full list. 

Commitments to Expand CS for All

Dozens of private sector partners and nonprofit organizations as well as state and local governments have stepped up to support CS for All, below are just a few of those commitments. See the full list here.

State and Local Action

Today’s announcements build upon bipartisan progress in states like Washington and Arkansas. Both states have announced ambitious computer science education efforts and passed legislation to make computer science count towards high school graduation. Similarly, cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco have already announced major expansions of computer science education.

Local leaders are using computer science to solve many of our most intractable local challenges and opportunities: Check out the Smart Cities Initiative, Police Data Initiative, TechHire, and more.

Involving our young people in real problems they can help solve in their own communities is a best practice in education and is exciting for our youth. Next Generation High Schools ) typically have significant computer science opportunities for American youth that pull them in as partners in solving challenges and engaging in their future. Seattle leadership hosted “Hack-the-Commute” involving community members from across the city.  New Orleans is engaging youth and others in their open data initiatives as part of their work on the Police Data Initiative with 25 other cities. Denver libraries are hosting teen-developer camps. Let’s do more of this youth engagement as part of their learning experience!

Private Sector Action

Businesses and philanthropies have also played a major role in building a movement to expand CS nationally.

• Apple is committing to expand coding opportunities for children with continued investment in training workshops and curriculum development.
• Cartoon Network will launch a $30 million campaign to engage young people in creative coding.
• Facebook will expand its outreach to parents, guardians, and learners in communities that are under-represented in the technology sector, and connect them to the resources to get started on how to code.
• Microsoft is announcing its campaign to have all states adopt “Make CS Count” policies and invest in CS education as a complement to existing $75 million initiative to support CS education
• Salesforce.org is announcing its plan to invest $13 million in 2016 to support CS and STEM education.
• Qualcomm will collaborate with Virginia Tech to create a Thinkabit Lab — part Maker Space, lab, and classroom — on its campus, with the goal of supporting computer science education for middle school students in the region.
• Code.org is committing to give computer science instruction workshops and other supports for 25,000 additional teachers this year.

Learn more

How You Can Engage

You can support the President's announcement on social media using the hashtag #CSforAll.

• Post photos of you, your class, your family, your workplace, or your community learning to code.
• If you are a professional coder or techie share how you got into the field and thank those people who helped you get where you are today.
• If you are a teacher or other leader who has solutions for learning that are already working — like our amazing Computer Science Education Champions of Change — tell us about those innovations so others can adopt them and build on your success.
• Share your stories about computer science heroes past and present — help our youth see the impact of the range of things computer science is a part of — from the digital contributions in mapping the human genome, to helping Americans get to the moon and back, to coding beats for great American music, to finding cancer cures and precision medicine solutions, to using data science for justice and equality.
• Help expand CS in your community by submitting your commitment today.

When I joined the White House a year ago, I asked the Archivist of the United States David Ferriero if the Declaration of Sentiments was part of the National Archives. The Declaration of Sentiments is the foundational document for women’s rights drafted in Seneca Falls, New York, at the first women's rights convention in July 1848. It changed the course of history.

Ferriero and his team asked around, and learned that it isn’t in the Archives’ holdings — the team contacted various experts and learned that the original Seneca Falls Declaration has not been found. The closest to “original” that anyone knew of is the printing of the text done in 1848 by Frederick Douglass’s print shop in Rochester. They found newspaper accounts and also checked “The Road to Seneca Falls” by Judith Wellman, who wrote that no one has ever found the minutes by Mary Ann M’Clintock that likely also went to Douglass’s print shop. They learned that the tea table upon which the original declaration was drafted has been found, but the document itself is still missing.

The road to drafting the Declaration of Sentiments started in 1840 when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott and their husbands traveled across the Atlantic to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London only to learn that women were no longer permitted on the main floor and had to listen from a gallery. We can only imagine their frustration!

A few years later, Mott visited her cousin Katherine McClintock near Seneca Falls, New York. During the visit, they hosted a tea where five women planned a convention to discuss women’s rights. In preparation for the convention, Stanton drafted a “Declaration of Rights and Sentiments,” which she modeled after the Declaration of Independence. In the document, she called for moral, economic, and political equality for women.

Our Search for the Sentiments

While the Archivist and his team searched for the Declaration of Sentiments, we at the White House conducted a search of our own. The Women’s Rights National Historical Park at Seneca Falls said that after the convention, Frederick Douglass — one of the more than 30 men who joined the convention and signed the declaration — took it to Rochester to publish it in his newspaper The North Star, but since that time the guide said that as far as they know it has been “lost to time.” We asked several academics and historians, including teams who founded and lead our academic women’s studies programs at colleges and universities for input as we searched and also checked various popular online marketplaces in case it was for sale.

We checked in with the Library of Congress where a team searched its collection including the Elizabeth Cady Stanton papers. The Library has a version that was incorporated into the “Report of the Women’s Rights Convention, Held at Seneca Falls, N.Y., July 19th and 20th, 1848,” included in a scrapbook kept by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her daughter, Harriet Stanton Blatch. But it’s not the original.

Here’s where you come in: Let's see if we can find this thing — and unveil other untold stories and histories in the process. Call it a real-life “National Treasure,” if you like.

Have a tip or an idea as to where the sentiments might be located? Or a related story? Share that with us here, and post on your social channels using the hashtag #FindTheSentiments. Have another untold story that you want to see written into history? We want to hear those, too.

It's going to take all of us speaking up to help preserve the stories of the incredible women and men who made this country what it is today. I hope you'll add your voice to the conversation.

The Lost History: Our own “National Treasure”

I had always wanted to see the Declaration of Sentiments and wanted to begin to raise awareness about its existence, its importance, its origin story, and its content because I’ve found that most people had never heard of it, despite its important content and position in world history. Like other American children, I learned about American history in social studies classes throughout school, but they touched only briefly on a few details of the struggle for women's rights and equality.

Women’s history was viewed as a niche corner of a la carte history, rather than stories and feats that were foundational to the shaping of our nation.

Our textbooks had only a few pages with a handful of photos and mentions of names, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Jane Addams, and only a brief description of the struggle for women’s right to vote leading up to the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and other stories in the struggle for women’s full equality.

Names like Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells, and Alice Paul, as well as references to suffrage gatherings, awareness parades and protests, cross-country rallies, the multi-week 1913 suffrage walk from New Jersey to Washington, D.C., the evolving strategies to push for voting and equality at the state and Federal levels by the National Woman Suffrage Association and the National Woman’s Party, frequent jail time for hundreds of women, hunger strikes, force feeding, the brutal Night of Terror in November 1917, the first drafting of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, and so much more, were not discussed. Women’s history was viewed as a niche corner of a la carte history, rather than stories and feats that were foundational to the shaping of our nation.

Some Americans know about the women who went to work in factories and shipyards during World War II thanks to Rosie the Riveter, and the women who kept the game of baseball going during those years from the film “A League of Their Own,” but they often don’t know Grace Hopper, the Navy Rear Admiral who was at the forefront of computer programming for nearly 50 years and invented computer languages; or NASA’s brilliant mathematician Katherine Johnson; or the University of Pennsylvania ENIAC programmers — six women who were the first digital programmers in America during WWII; or Rosie Rios, Treasurer of the United States who is working with Treasury Secretary Lew to make sure women are included on paper currency for the first time in a century. The only two women who have ever appeared on our notes were Pocahontas and Martha Washington in the 1800s.

Listen to the stories of other fascinating women in STEM. 

We need to expand who is included in our well known history. It’s an honor to work for a President who has prioritized empowering women and promoting rights and progress through policy initiatives to combat discrimination, expand access to health care, support women-owned business, fight for fair pay, keep women safe from violence at home and school, and include women in all aspects of our economy, including entrepreneurship and innovation leadership opportunities. On his first day in office, the President created the White House Council on Women and Girls led by Valerie Jarrett and Tina Tchen to ensure that the needs and empowerment of women and girls are taken into account in all programs, policies, and legislation.

This conversation is just beginning.

It is not lost on me that the ongoing invisibility of women and girls is a serious issue for our country, and for the world. The invisibility of our history, heroes, stories, challenges, and success handicaps the future of all Americans, and it deeply affects our economy and our communities.

The Declaration of Sentiments can help us tell that story. I hope that one day this foundational document will have a home on display in the Rotunda of our National Archives with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. But, even if we ultimately find that it is lost for good, my hope is that we can help bring to light the stories of heroes most of this country — and our children especially — have yet to meet. With that knowledge, the future for all men and women will be brighter.

Stay tuned — we'll be in touch with what we learn!

@USCTO @WhiteHouseOSTP #FindTheSentiments

Throughout his life, Jake dedicated his creativity, brilliance, enthusiastic optimism and actions to helping others. He believed that public service could not only improve people's lives but also change for the better our very notion of the good that our government can deliver: a nation of the people, for the people, by the people which brings the best of our country to bear – collaborating together on our toughest challenges using our best approaches.

He had a generous heart and a vision for engaging with technology, data, and most importantly each other, to create opportunity and find solutions together. Jake lived and loved more in his 34 years than some people do in their whole lives.

Even his tragic passing, which occurred during a community event to raise money to fight a disease that had stricken a friend, says so much about his character and the daily example he set for all who knew him. Throughout his career, Jake traveled across the country and around the world collaborating with teammates to help improve the lives of others. His story is filled with high impact adventures in service, inclusion and "doing." He was an awesome addition to the White House family.

A small sample of Jake's work in just the past two weeks included: leading our participation in an event in the Bronx to help underprivileged young people learn to code; working with our colleagues to accelerate the President’s TechHire Initiative; and bringing together leaders from industry and government to use data to connect those with key skills to job opportunities.

Our thoughts are with his family, including his parents and sisters, his wife Mary Katharine Ham, young daughter Georgia and her sibling on the way, and his many friends.

You can read the President's full statement here. 

Dr. John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, also offered the following statement.

I am shocked and devastated by the tragic accident that took Jake Brewer from his family and from all of us yesterday. Jake was a bundle of brains, energy, commitment, and compassion. I know that the members of Team CTO—indeed, all of us in OSTP and across the EOP—are in mourning over this terrible loss and struggling to think of ways we can help. I know, too, that our grief will be matched in the days ahead by our solidarity and determination to support each other and find every appropriate way to honor Jake and help his beautiful young family through this impossibly painful time.

Who Jake Was:

Jake Brewer served as a Senior Advisor to the U.S. Chief Technology Officer within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). In this role, Jake oversaw efforts to connect the nation’s tech and innovation assets (people, places, tools, data, and methods) to the Administration’s opportunity creation efforts, enabling all Americans to take part in, contribute to, and benefit from the economy of the future. Jake helped to advance the Administration’s TechHire initiative to create more pathways to well-paying tech jobs by empowering Americans with the tech skills they need to succeed in those jobs. At OSTP, Jake also worked with federal agencies and stakeholders to accelerate the release and use of workforce data to inform workforce training efforts. Jake also supported Administration initiatives to expand America’s access to greater broadband connectivity.

Jake Brewer's impactful career focused on building citizen-led open government and increasing citizens' capacity to have real impact in executive offices and the halls of government. Prior to joining the OSTP team, Jake led global policy and external affairs at Change.org with the aim to remake the relationship between government or corporate leaders and the international public impacted by their decisions. Jake also served as co-founder and board president of Define American, working to reframe the American immigration debate in media and culture. Jake's past work also included leading the engagement division of the Sunlight Foundation; launching an initiative on veteran employment with the White House and Code for America; helping create US Ignite—a national "gigabit" initiative responding to the Administration's call to transform healthcare, education, transportation, and more through next-generation Internet applications; and designing the national Civic Data Challenge to bring critical "civic health" data to civic decision-makers. Outside the office, Jake was a competitive triathlete and a published photographer, and he served in a variety of advisory and board roles with organizations building a healthier democracy. He graduated with a B.S. in Psychology / Human and Organizational Development from Vanderbilt University and studied Political Science at the United States Naval Academy.

If you didn't get the email, make sure to sign up for email updates here. And if you want to apply to be a part of the Demo Day, or nominate someone you know, you can do that here.

Right now, across America, people are working on big ideas. Game-changing ideas. Ideas that might sound unbelievable right now, but could become an indispensable product or service in a matter of years.

But they might not ever get a chance to make that idea into a reality. Here's why:

So many Americans have the grit and creativity of a world-class entrepreneur, but they lack the resources -- mentorship, networking, funding, training -- to bring their big ideas to fruition.

We've got to change that reality. As we work to keep our lead as the best place on the planet to start and scale big, innovative ideas, we've got to make sure more startup hotbeds emerge in every corner of America, and that those underrepresented in entrepreneurship are being tapped to fully contribute their entrepreneurial talents.

So we're looking to spur some big changes. Last week, for instance, we hosted the first-ever Tech Meetup at the White House to bring together community organizations and innovators who host weekly and monthly local innovation gatherings.

That's why we're so excited about the first-ever White House Demo Day, focused on inclusive entrepreneurship.

At a typical "Demo Day," entrepreneurs make pitches to prospective funders. Ours is a little different. We're inviting a diverse group of entrepreneurs from all across the country -- including those underrepresented in entrepreneurship like women and people of color -- to come here and talk about their big ideas and share the stories of their individual innovation journeys to date. These are the folks whose stories show exactly why we need to grow the pie to make sure there's opportunity for everyone in our innovation economy.

We hope you will be one of them.

Apply to be a part of our first-ever Demo Day here at the White House, or nominate someone you know to come participate. But do it soon, because the deadline for submissions is April 24.

Our teams are combing through the incredible submissions so far as we speak. We can't wait to hear your story, and we hope to see you here soon.

Thanks,

Megan Smith and Doug Rand
Office of Science and Technology Policy
The White House

Organizers from cities and rural communities are starting coding bootcamps, hosting startup weekends, running share spaces, holding maker events, and setting up hundreds of innovation-focused tech Meetups every day. They hail from all parts of the United States – from Alaska to Alabama, Connecticut to Kentucky, New Jersey to New Mexico, Ohio to Oregon, Tennessee to Texas, and Nebraska to New York.

They are community organizers, local elected officials, artists, business and civic leaders, coders, designers, entrepreneurs, funders, and more. Each of these leaders is playing a part in building interconnected local talent ecosystems that enable more Americans to get involved in entrepreneurship, economic development, and community solutions – inclusive, fun, high-impact innovation of all kinds.

We will gather for the White House Tech Meetup with a few goals in mind: to help each other thrive by sharing best practices and scale outreach and inclusion efforts, to find ways to help more of our neighbors join in (especially those who have been less well-represented in tech), and to engage young people. Through this event, we want to “upgrade” the ability to include all of us in technology and innovation.

The White House Tech Meetup builds on President Obama’s focus on expanding opportunity for all Americans, including the TechHire Initiative announced earlier this year. Currently, there are 5 million jobs open today in the U.S., with more than 500,000 open jobs in IT. TechHire aims to grow our economy by helping fill open jobs in fields like cybersecurity, user interface design, data analytics, and customer support. Working through universities and community colleges, as well as new approaches to learning like coding bootcamps and online platforms, TechHire rapidly trains workers for tech careers. In parallel, TechHire supports local employers to expand hiring practices to include individuals who have gone through these new alternative training programs.

Already, more than 20 communities are participating in TechHire to fill open IT jobs, many of which pay 50 percent more than the average salary. TechHire communities work to help qualify more people for careers in technology in a matter of months instead of years, which can help local economies thrive.

Efforts like TechHire and the White House Tech Meetup are focused on growing the ecosystem of talented Americans participating in our local tech communities by actively reaching out to those who may not initially think that product management, learning to code, mobile app user interface design, or a web Meetup group is for them. We encourage local tech leaders to connect with people of all genders, ages (especially youth), and backgrounds to help them know and believe that they can be our next generation of startup founders, entrepreneurs, computer scientists, innovative designers, and product managers.

This Friday at 9:00 a.m. ET, watch the White House Tech Meetup at WhiteHouse.gov/Live and participate via #WHMeetup to be part of this convening of incredible Americans representing our Innovation Nation.

President Barack Obama speaks to the press after a meeting with members of the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, March 2, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

In December, President Obama announced the creation of a Task Force on 21st Century Policing to develop specific recommendations to improve law enforcement and community relations while ensuring public safety. The Task Force, representing a diverse array of law enforcement and civil rights experts along with community leaders, engaged numerous stakeholders and constituency groups across the country to identify meaningful opportunities to improve policing in America.

Last month, the Task Force submitted an interim report with more than 60 recommendations to the President. Among other items, these recommendations cover policy, oversight, technology, social media, community policing, crime reduction, training, education, and officer wellness and safety. The report and recommendations place significant emphasis on the potential of data and technology to improve policing outcomes and foster community trust. 

Yesterday at the White House, as part of an ongoing effort to respond to these data/technology recommendations, over a dozen police chiefs, municipal Chief Technology Officers, and other leaders from 16 cities and counties across the nation collaborated with technologists, data scientists, law enforcement thought leaders, foundations, issue experts, Presidential Innovation Fellows, nonprofits, and Administration officials.

Deputy Assistance to the President Roy Austin welcomes police chiefs, municipal CTOs, technologists, police association leaders, and law enforcement experts to the Police Data Initiative working session at the White House.

First, the group heard from police and municipal leaders about innovative solutions that they have already put into practice in their municipalities. These leaders shared existing approaches, insights and innovations that other communities could take back and start implementing immediately. Starting with lightning presentations from four communities, the Police Chiefs of Camden County, NJ and Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC shared their work on the foundational importance of creating strong internal accountability and community feedback systems. This included steps already taken and vision for the enormous opportunities which exist to analyze the rich data available on police/citizen encounters to improve police practices, community voice, and community trust. Both Dallas and Los Angeles leadership shared the power of opening up key data sets to the public, bringing transparency and context to the complexities of police work.

Next, the group collaborated to surface promising practices and existing efforts — identifying opportunities to build on and expand individual efforts to benefit a broader range of communities. At the working session, attendees shared experiences, identified new solutions, and explored opportunities to reduce inappropriate police conduct, better engage public input in real time, and enhance community trust. Many of these departments made new commitments to open up data that had previously been inaccessible to the public.

It is critically important that the recommendations of the President’s Task Force be put into practice without delay by police departments in communities across the country. We are pleased that groups like the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights have done a recommendation-by-recommendation review of the Task Force Report with their memberships and provided the White House with some of their thoughts about implementation.

Yesterday’s event left us encouraged because these forward-thinking police departments have stepped forward to take on these innovation challenges, have already been working collaboratively to turn the promising ideas in the report into results for their community, and are sharing those innovations with others as well as listening for more they can do. These departments are identifying how to use new tools to solve persistent problems. Yesterday’s conversation at the White House was just the beginning of an ongoing initiative — as it is just one of many lines of effort in support of the Task Force’s work.

We look forward to continuing to engage with yesterday’s participants and others as they take action, using data and technology to build trust, voice, solutions and improve community policing.

“The work you do here is one of the reasons why Boise is one of our top cities for tech startups,” the President said during a visit to Boise State University’s New Product Development Lab. The lab and its community actively foster innovation — and they do so with a culture of inclusivity. As the President remarked during his visit, “[W]hen everybody is participating and given a shot, there’s nothing we cannot do. … Because when we've got everybody on the field, that's when you win games.”

Our entrepreneurial economy is the envy of the world. But we need to do more to make sure that we are tapping America’s full entrepreneurial potential — drawing on talented Americans from all backgrounds and locations.

According to surveys, 87 percent of U.S. venture capital-backed business founders are white, 12 percent are Asian, and less than 1 percent are African American. Less than 3 percent of companies that receive venture capital funding have a woman CEO. Last year, minority-owned firms represented only 7 percent of the entrepreneurs that presented their business pitches to angel funders, and accounted for just 4 percent of the angel funding community. Only 6 percent of partners at venture capital firms are women. This is not good for our economy and it wastes talent.

Funding fuels new companies. And venture capital investments — one indicator of access to entrepreneurial opportunities — are heavily concentrated in a few coastal metro areas, like San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Boston, Los Angeles, and New York City. While there is evidence that more communities like Boise are emerging as hubs of entrepreneurial activity, access to capital can be hard to come by in too many locations – last year, for example, more venture capital was deployed in California than in all other states combined.

To maintain our lead as the best place on the planet to start and scale a great company, we must ensure that vibrant startup ecosystems emerge in every corner of America and that all Americans, including those underrepresented in entrepreneurship like women and people of color, are both encouraged and able to fully contribute their entrepreneurial talents and access resources. 

That’s why we are excited to announce the first-ever White House Demo Day to take place later this summer. In the coming weeks, we will release more details on the event. Unlike a private-sector Demo Day where entrepreneurs pitch funders, this event will “demo” individuals’ and teams’ success stories — it will highlight stories from across the country that exemplify how we can “grow the pie” by including everyone in our startup economy. The day will also lift up best practices from all sectors that are aimed at making sure that all entrepreneurs get a crack at success. As Vice President Joe Biden said earlier today, we risk losing our competitive edge if we continue to neglect our full entrepreneurial potential by relying on a handful of people in a handful of places. We have to get all of our best talent off the bench and onto the field.

The White House Demo Day will build on steps the Administration is already taking to empower a diversity of entrepreneurs from around the country to launch and scale innovative companies. For example, on Monday, the President announced TechHire, a bold multi-sector effort and call to action to expand hiring practices for companies in critical need of tech workforce talent and empower Americans with the skills they need — through universities and community colleges but also non-traditional approaches like “coding bootcamps,” and high-quality online courses — that can rapidly train workers for a good-paying job, often in just a few months. And the U.S. Small Business Administration recently made 50 awards to some of America’s most promising startup accelerator programs outside the usual tech hubs — including TECenter at Boise State. The President’s Fiscal Year 2016 Budget includes a proposal to reauthorize a successful $1.5 billion state-based capital access program called the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI), with a renewed focus on promoting inclusive entrepreneurship and strengthening regional startup communities.

Why are we focused on inclusive entrepreneurship? Because the economic argument is as compelling as the moral one. U.S. Census data show that minority entrepreneurs are the fastest-growing entrepreneurial segment in the country — in the decade between 1997 and 2007, minority-owned firms grew four times faster than their non-minority-owned counterparts. Despite the existing barriers in place, women are majority owners of an estimated ten million businesses — or 36 percent of all businesses in the United States — with annual economic impact estimated at nearly $3 trillion. We can’t afford to leave entrepreneurial talent that exists in every region of the country untapped and unfunded.

Promoting inclusive entrepreneurship is an effort that has to come from every sector. Companies, foundations, universities, and other players in the entrepreneurial ecosystem are increasingly recognizing the role they can play in tapping America’s full entrepreneurial potential, and many are stepping up.

Participate in White House Demo Day

Get involved! Are you a university, a foundation, a company, an accelerator, or another key player in our nation’s entrepreneurship ecosystem? If you want to take new actions to ensure that America taps its full entrepreneurial potential, we want to hear from you. Tell us about the commitments you’re ready to announce by filling out this online form, which tracks some of the themes we plan to highlight at White House Demo Day:

• Growing Local Innovation Economies: What new steps will you take to increase the geographic diversity of startup activity and investment?
• Training Startup-Ready Students: What new steps will you take to ensure that all college and university students are exposed to the inspiration, opportunity, and experience to choose an entrepreneurial path?
• Expanding On-Ramps to Entrepreneurship: Looking across the American ecosystem of business incubators, startup accelerators, tech meetups, and other “on-ramps” to entrepreneurship, what new steps will you take to increase participation by all, including underrepresented groups?
• Connecting Diverse Talent to Capital: What new steps will you take to ensure that all entrepreneurs with investable innovations have a straight shot at securing seed and growth capital?
• Local Open Gatherings: How are you bringing these communities together locally to work on the challenges and opportunities?

Introduce Us to Dazzling Entrepreneurs

If you know an entrepreneur or founding team who exemplifies America’s role as the best place in the world to start and scale a company and who would wow the crowd at the White House Demo Day, tell us about them here. We look forward to hearing from you!

Yesterday, speaking to nearly 2,000 local leaders at the National League of Cities annual meeting, President Obama announced his TechHire initiative, a new campaign to work with communities to get more Americans rapidly trained for well-paying technology jobs.

The United States has about 5 million open jobs today, more than at any point since 2001. Over half a million of those job openings are in information technology (IT) fields like software development, network administration, user-interface design and cybersecurity – many of which did not even exist just a decade ago. The average salary in a job that requires IT skills – whether in manufacturing, advertising, retail, or banking – is 50 percent higher than the average private-sector American job.  

In his remarks, the President emphasized that these open jobs are an economic development issue. When those jobs go unfilled, it’s a loss for American workers, for employers eager to hire, for our regional economies and for American competitiveness. Helping U.S. companies fill these critical jobs and empowering more Americans to train for and get these jobs is a key element of the President’s middle-class economics agenda. 

TechHire is a multi-sector effort and call to action for local communities to collaborate in helping employers fill critical local IT job gaps by empowering a diverse array of Americans to rapidly gain the necessary technology skills, including using nontraditional training options like “coding bootcamps” and high-quality online courses. 

The TechHire initiative is kicking off with a broad range of partners already on board:

• 21 forward-leaning communities and over 300 employer partners. 21 regions, with over 120,000 open technology jobs and more than 300 employer partners, are announcing plans to work together on new ways to recruit and place applicants into jobs based on their actual skills and to create more rapid IT training opportunities. Get your community or employer involved by learning more here.

• New tools, resources, and commitments to support TechHire communities. Private sector leaders are announcing new tools and resources to encourage and expand continued innovation in technology training, with a focus on reaching under-served populations. For example, Capital One, through its FutureEdge initiative, $150 million FutureEdge initiative to help increase tech skills and hiring, while providing support tailored to the needs of local communities. LinkedIn will provide free data about the supply and demand of IT skills to help communities focus their efforts on in-demand jobs. To ensure high quality, A group of coding bootcamps have begun collaborating on how to transparently report completion and employment outcomes and they published an initial plan in a letter to the President today. A complete list of private sector commitments can be found here.

• $100 million in new Federal investments. The Administration will launch a $100 million H-1B grant competition by the Department of Labor to support innovative approaches to training and successfully employing individuals who face barriers to training and employment, including those with child care responsibilities, people with disabilities, disconnected youth, and limited English proficient workers, among others. This grant competition will support the growth of evidence-based strategies such as accelerated learning, work-based learning, and Registered Apprenticeships.

These new efforts will build on the Administration’s broader agenda to invest in training for in-demand industries, including recent announcements by the Department of Labor on increased support for apprenticeships and by the Veterans Administration on accelerated learning.

And the President's visit to Georgia Tech today builds on the key themes he outlined yesterday with the launch of his Tech Hire initiative. We need to keep adapting our training options as new innovative models emerge which can reduce training time, costs, accessibility. The online Computer Science degree at Georgia Tech is a great example: it’s reducing cost and has the potential to do so without reducing quality.

Yesterday was just the beginning for TechHire. As the President highlighted at the National League of Cities, TechHire’s success will require many more to step up: Mayors and local leaders, employers and tech innovators, philanthropists and non-profits, workforce leaders and training providers, and everyone committed to unlocking the hidden talent in our communities. 

The President ended his remarks with the remarkable story of LaShana Lewis. LaShana grew up in East St. Louis with a passion for computers.  But without a college degree, she couldn’t even get an interview for a tech job. So she spent 12 years as a bus driver and in entry-level jobs.  But with help of entrepreneurial new training organizations like LaunchCode which helped give her skills and vouched for her, she’s now an Associate System Engineer at MasterCard, and MasterCard wants more people like her to join their team. 

LaShana’s story can be the story of so many others, and working together, we can ensure that it will be. We encourage everyone to reach out and discover your local tech community, whether through coding bootcamps, tech meetups, hack-a-thon gatherings, campus tech or entrepreneurship clubs and more. We hope you will take the time to learn more about TechHire at WhiteHouse.gov/TechHire and bring it to your community.

Get more details below -- and if you didn't get the email, make sure to sign up for email updates here.

In a few hours, we'll be hosting the first-ever "edit-a-thon" here at the White House as part of our celebration of Black History Month.

Today, we join others in working to raise visibility of past and living African American heroes through similar edit-a-thons, classroom activities, and on social media.

Katherine Johnson, an elite mathematician, was central in calculating the trajectories for John Glenn, Alan Shepard, and the Apollo 11 mission. Lewis Howard Latimer was recruited to join the Edison Electric Light Company after Latimer patented his "process for manufacturing carbons," allowing the company to improve production of carbon filaments used in light bulbs upgraded from the earlier paper-based filaments that burned out quickly. Earlier, Latimer worked as Alexander Graham Bell's draftsman and is credited with penning the drawings in Bell's telephone patent.

It's critically important to know about all of the talented people who have been a part of advancing culture and society throughout America's history.

Together, we can help make sure these nearly lost histories are captured for our youth. Today's event will focus on African American heroes in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

At 5:00 p.m. ET, join us online:

Starting at 5, we'll host students, researchers, and other members of the science community for an "edit-a-thon" where, in a two-hour crowd-sourced sprint, guests at the White House and online participants will add to and expand the stories of African Americans in STEM.

And we're encouraging people across the country to join us.

Help research and share the stories of African American STEM leaders, past and present, on the platform of your choice -- meet up on Wikipedia here, and share stories and photos on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and elsewhere using the hashtag #BHMEditathon.

Maybe the story you share belongs to someone you know, or someone you've read about in school. Maybe it's your story.

We can't wait to hear from you.

- Megan and Marvin

Across our great nation, we’ve begun to see an acceleration of the power of data to deliver value. From early open data work by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides data that enables weather forecasts to come directly to our mobile phones, to powering GPS systems that feed geospatial data to countless apps and services — government data has supported a transformation in the way we live today for the better.

DJ joins the White House following an incredible career as a data scientist — a term he helped coin — in the public and private sectors, and in academia. Most recently, DJ served as the Vice President of Product at RelateIQ, which was acquired by Salesforce. DJ also previously held positions at LinkedIn, Greylock Partners, Skype, PayPal, and eBay. Prior to his work in the private sector, DJ worked at the Department of Defense, where he directed new efforts to bridge computational and social sciences in fields like social network analysis to help anticipate emerging threats to the United States.

As a doctoral student and faculty member at the University of Maryland, DJ used open datasets published by NOAA to make major improvements in numerical weather forecasting. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of California, San Diego, and a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Maryland College Park. DJ has also authored a number of influential articles and books explaining the important current and potential applications of data science.

As Chief Data Scientist, DJ will help shape policies and practices to help the U.S. remain a leader in technology and innovation, foster partnerships to help responsibly maximize the nation’s return on its investment in data, and help to recruit and retain the best minds in data science to join us in serving the public. DJ will also work on the Administration’s Precision Medicine Initiative, which focuses on utilizing advances in data and health care to provide clinicians with new tools, knowledge, and therapies to select which treatments will work best for which patients, while protecting patient privacy.

As part of the CTO team, DJ will work closely with colleagues across government, including the Chief Information Officer and U.S. Digital Service. DJ’s work will also include data science leadership on the Administration’s momentum on open data and data science.

Over the past six years, the Obama administration has made historic progress in this area. In addition to making more than 138,000 data sets available to the public for innovation and entrepreneurship, the Administration is also empowering Americans with secure access to their personal data and expanding our capacity to process and examine large and complex datasets. Utilizing data for innovation holds amazing potential for the future of our country.

DJ’s work will help ensure government remains effective and innovative for the American public in our increasingly digital world. We welcome DJ to our team.

A painting of an elegantly dressed woman named Lady Ada Lovelace hangs on the wall at the U.K. Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street.

She's considered to be the world's first programmer -- but most people have never heard of her.

Ada Lovelace's experience remains all too familiar: So many of the breakthrough contributions of women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields continue to go untold, too often fading into obscurity.

Join us in doing something to change that: Listen to women from across the Obama administration share the untold stories of women who’ve inspired us.

Then add an untold history of your own, and make a commitment to share these stories in any way you can to help inspire more young women and men to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Women were central in the early teams building the foundation of modern programming. They unveiled the structure of DNA. Their work inspired new environmental movements and led to the discovery of new genes. It's past time to write their stories permanently into history, so they can stand side by side with the extraordinary men like them who have used their technical and innovation skills to bring needed solutions and discoveries to our world.

And here's what's worth noting: Telling and sharing these stories will actively help create more of them in the future. Research shows us that a key part of inspiring more young people to pursue careers in science and technology is simply sharing the stories of role models like them in these fields who have had a significant impact on our world.

Stories like that of Rosalind Franklin, whose research was essential for revealing the structure of DNA. There’s Katherine Johnson, who calculated key flight trajectories during the Space Race. The ENIAC team -- six young women “Computers” who were the first digital programmers in America. Or Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, who first developed computer languages and a compiler to translate them into machine code.

If you don't know those names, it's time to learn: Take a look at our interactive audio hub -- and then watch, share, add and commit.

You just might inspire the next Ada Lovelace.

Megan Smith is the United States Chief Technology Officer. Jo Handelsman is Associate Director for Science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Learn more:

• This post is part of Computer Science Education Week’s Grace Hopper and Ada Lovelace Birthday Celebrations.
• The President got in on the celebration this week by learning to write a line of code from a 13 year-old girl from Newark, NJ.
• On Wednesday evening we also hosted over a hundred students at the White House for a mini-film festival on the Computing Heroes: The Nearly Lost History of Elite Technical Women. The run of show included: Makers Profile: Katherine Johnson from NASA (4:39 min); Makers Profile: Maria Klawe, Computer Science Pioneer (4:45 min); The Computers (20 min) story of the ENIAC Programmers; Makers Film: Women in Space (4 min excerpt); The Imitation Game Trailer -- a film which chronicles the story of WWII Bletchley Park code breakers Alan Turning and Joan Clarke (1:43 min); and clip from David Letterman’s Interview of Grace Hopper.

Today – on the first day of 2014 Computer Science Education Week (#CSEdWeek) – President Obama is welcoming approximately 30 middle-school-aged students from Newark, NJ, and Brooklyn, NY, to roll up their sleeves, get online together, and participate in an “Hour of Code” here at the White House. These students will join millions of people around the world who are participating in similar Hour of Code events this week to get familiar with the basics of computer programming through innovative online tutorials for learners of all ages.

Recognizing the importance of connecting America’s students with tech-skills that are increasingly relevant to how we live, work, learn, play, and create, President Obama issued a call during last year’s CSEdWeek to the education community, businesses, foundations, and non-profit organizations to help support and expand access to computer science education in K-12 schools.

In an important step to achieve these goals, the Obama Administration today announced more progress – sharing a host of new commitments that will help give millions of additional students access to computer science education. These include:

• Commitments by more than 60 school districts, including the seven largest school districts in the country, to offer computer science courses to their students. Together, these districts reach over 4 million students in more than 1,000 high schools and middle schools nationwide.
• Over $20 million in philanthropic contributions to train 10,000 teachers by Fall 2015 and 25,000 teachers to teach computer science in time for the school year beginning in Fall 2016. Many of these teachers serve Elementary school students.
• New partnerships by the National Science Foundation (NSF) including a new Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science course by the College Board that emphasizes the creative aspects of computing and a focus on real-world applications. Leading partners, including Teach for America and the National Math and Science Initiative, will assist in implementation and scale-up of the course.
• New steps to increase the participation of women and under-represented minorities in computer science, with a new computer science classroom design prize and many innovative outreach efforts. Work includes bringing needed visibility to exceptional role models like Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, the ENIAC programmers, NASA’s Katherine Johnson, and other leading technical heroes.

By 2020, more than half of all science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) jobs are projected to be in computer science-related fields. Yet a large majority of K-12 schools still don’t offer computer programming classes. That’s why commitments like those announced today by schools, companies, organizations, and communities across the country are so essential. 

We’re thrilled to see the progress being made across the country to connect kids with computer science. Here at the White House, we’ll be celebrating Computer Science Education Week all week with additional events and activities. We urge everyone join the celebration, take and hour, and get coding!

For more information on the commitments being announced today, click here.

Megan Smith is the U.S. Chief Technology Officer @USCTO

Danielle Carnival is Senior Policy Advisor, Science Division, White House Office of Science & Technology Policy @WhiteHouseOSTP