About Us
The Recoding America Fund (RAF) is a six-year, $120 million philanthropic initiative aimed at reforming governments at both the federal and state levels.
The fund will organize the field around the framework from the Niskanen Center’s recent state capacity report, authored by board chair Jennifer Pahlka.
Government that delivers on its goals must be able to:
- Hire and keep the right people
- Reduce procedural bloat
- Develop purpose-fit digital and data infrastructure
- Leverage test-and-learn frameworks
Therefore, the fund and its partners must:
- Reform our nation’s civil service systems
- Change how governments invest in, develop, and oversee digital infrastructure
- Reform government procedures
- Demonstrate a new operating model that reimagines the relationship between the legislative and executive branches to improve outcomes.
Over its six-year timeline, the fund aims to drive meaningful, measurable improvements in government capacity at both the federal and state levels.
Our Leadership
Our leadership team brings together cross-sector policy leaders, senior government officials, and executives with experience spanning federal agencies, philanthropy, venture, education, health, and technology.
Team
Chief Executive Officer
Anne Healy
Anne brings to RAF a nearly 20-year career across the public, social, and private sectors building and scaling high-impact initiatives that reshape public institutions. As a career civil servant at USAID, Anne led some of the agency’s boldest efforts to improve its impact per dollar—including the Office of the Chief Economist and its tiered innovation fund, Development Innovation Ventures—cultivating bipartisan support in Congress and multiple administrations for this focus on outcomes. Previously, she was a leader at J-PAL and Evidence Action, served at the State Department, and advised federal and state government clients at McKinsey & Company.
Executive Vice President for State Initiatives
Robert
Gordon
Robert has served as Assistant Secretary for Financial Resources at the federal Department of Health and Human Services, Director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, and Managing Director at the New York City Department of Education, as well as a senior White House official and consultant to state and local governments. Across his career, he has worked on big initiatives to make governments work better.
Policy Director
Lauren Lombardo
Lauren has led government modernization efforts across federal, state, and local institutions. She most recently served as Deputy Policy Director for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, where she helped drive the Committee’s state capacity legislative agenda. Previously, she worked in the U.S. Senate as a technology policy fellow for Senator Ben Sasse, advised state and local governments on digital transformation, and was a Senior Data Scientist at Nielsen.
Chief Financial Officer
Emily
Hsieh
Emily has provided financial and operational management to various nonprofits in the democracy reform, policy and advocacy space. She was previously a fellow at Arnold Ventures supporting the democracy, immigration, and climate portfolios. Prior to that, she served as the COO of a global financial services firm, offering index-tracking products focused on the energy infrastructure sector.
Atharv Gupta
Atharv is fascinated by how governments build and use digital infrastructure to drive impact. He has studied this across many sectors, most recently as a fellow at a hard tech venture capital fund and previously at the U.S. State Department, World Bank, and various risk consultancies and nonprofits. As a U.S. Rhodes Scholar, he received two Master’s degrees, one from the Oxford Internet Institute where he researched India’s digital payments infrastructure, and another in Creative Writing. He received his bachelor’s from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
Board of Directors
Board Chair
Jennifer Pahlka
Former US Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Former member of the Defense Innovation Board, Author of Recoding America and the Eating Policy substack
Charlie Anderson
EVP for Infrastructure at Arnold Ventures
Galen Hines-Pierce
Founder and Principal of The Minerva Fund
Santi Ruiz
Senior Editor at the Institute for Progress; Host of the Statecraft podcast
Judge Glock
Director of Research and a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute
Advisory Council
Nicholas Bagley
Professor of Law at University of Michigan and Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center
Dean Ball
Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, and former White House Senior Policy Advisor for AI and Emerging Technology
Ben Buchanan
Dmitri Alperovitch Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and former White House Special Advisor on AI
Reeve Bull
Director of Virginia Office of Regulatory Management
G.T. Bynum
Vice President of Community & Government Affairs at Saint Francis Health System and former mayor of Tulsa, OK
Solitaire Carroll
Former Acting Director of Veterans Experience Services Portfolio at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, now writing on digital government for Niskanen Center
Marc Dunkelman
Senior Fellow, Searchlight Institute; Fellow at Brown University's Watson School for International and Public Affairs and author of Why Nothing Works
Chris Griswold
Policy Director at American Compass and Non-Resident Fellow at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry.
Dan Ho
Professor, Stanford University; Director, Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab (RegLab); and Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI)
Jeanne Lambrew
Director of Health Care Reform and Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation and former commissioner of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services
Marshall Kosloff
Host of The Realignment Podcast, Senior Fellow and Director of Special Projects at the Niskanen Center, Executive Producer of Endless Frontiers, and a Senior Fellow at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at UT-Austin
Zachary Liscow
Professor of Law at Yale Law School, former Chief Economist at the Office of Management and Budget at the White House
Marina Nitze
Director, Child Welfare Playbook and co-author of Hack Your Bureaucracy and Crisis Engineering
Stephanie Pollack
MIT Mobility Initiative Senior Fellow; former Secretary of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation; and former Deputy Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration
Stefanie Sanford
Chair, Institute for Citizens & Scholars and President of Civic Ventures at Alithi Consulting
Daniel Stid
Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
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