Announcing the Fall 2025 Rising Civic AI Leaders Cohort

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Announcing the Fall 2025 Rising Civic AI Leaders Cohort

Article Published October 9, 2025

We’re thrilled to announce the 21 participants of our Fall 2025 Rising Civic AI Leaders program, hosted in conjunction with Aspen Digital. These Leaders are currently participating in our immersive, 3-month virtual policy training course, where they are gaining the skills necessary to impact policy. Leaders are learning to transform their government background and emerging technology expertise into policy through tools like policy writing, public speaking, stakeholder mapping, and solution scoping.

The Fall 2025 Rising Civic AI Leaders are:

Aaron Garber-Paul, Equity Data and Policy Analyst in the Office of Equity and Human Rights, City of Portland, OR
Anjali Patel, Product Manager for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Bianca Lepe, Data Scientist for the City of Boston
Robert “Bobby” Zipp, Chief Data Officer in the District Attorney General’s Office, Shelby County, TN
Cody Hounanian, Program Director for the State Bar of California
Daria Kirilenko, Senior Advisor at Cyber Command, New York City Office of Technology and Innovation
Ishu Gupta, Innovation and Data Strategy Lead for the City of Green Bay, WI
Jessica Kaisaris, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft AI
Julia Chrusciel, Privacy Program Lead for the City and County of San Francisco
Keerthy Reddy, AI and Emerging Technologies Fellow in the City of Seattle’s Information Technology Department
Kyla Williams Tate, Digital Equity Director in the Office of President Toni Preckwinkle, Cook County, Illinois,
Lauren Maffeo, Senior Program Manager of AI/ML for the State of Maryland
Małgosia Rejniak, Program Manager for AI and Data Governance for the City of Long Beach, CA
Matt Zhou, Assistant State Chief Data Officer in the California Office of Data and Innovation
Michael Huang, Product Manager in the City of Boston Department of Innovation and Technology
Nneka Sobers, Deputy Director of New York City’s Innovation Team (i-team)
Ricky Santiago, Digital Inclusion Manager for the City of Louisville, KY
Robin Jones, Data Literacy Lead in the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services
Rohan Sharma, CEO of Zenolabs.AI, author of “AI and the Boardroom,” and Chair of Trustworthyaiindex.org
Dr. Solomon Abiola, AI/ML Policy and Governance Director for the State of Maryland
Zoe Durbin, Technology Strategist for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Thank you to our Civic AI Champions for helping nominate these Leaders: Afua Bruce and Kerry Jordan.

For more information about the Rising Civic AI Leaders program, see here. To learn more about the current Leaders, you can read their bios here.

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