Jessica Cole

Director / Aspen Institute Tech Policy Hub

Jessica is the interim Director of the Aspen Institute’s Tech Policy Hub, which trains the next generation of policy entrepreneurs by teaching the policy process to experts in STEM, climate, and nonprofits. Jessica is an urbanist and repeat executive in the public interest tech space whose expertise is in bringing civic communities together and in building organizations at the intersection of government and technology.

Before joining the Aspen Institute, Jessica cofounded and served as CEO at U.S. Digital Response, a tech nonprofit that enables governments to keep up with their communities’ most critical needs, as the team scaled to serve more than 200 governments and nonprofits across the country. Prior to that, she served as a Fellow with Code for America and in local government as the Head of Innovation and Economic Development for the City of Walnut Creek, CA. She also served as a Tech Policy Fellow at the Aspen Institute in 2020, where she worked on increasing access to civil court representation via the use of automated advocacy tools.