Hollie Russon Gilman

Focus areas: democratic innovation, technology and governance, public participation

Hollie Russon-Gilman is a Lecturer and Post-Doctoral Fellow in Technology and Policy. Her first book is Democracy Reinvented: Participatory Budgeting and Civic Innovation and America. She has a forthcoming co-authored book with Cambridge University Press.

She served in the Obama White House as the Open Government and Innovation Advisor in the Office of Science and Technology Policy and worked as an a field organizer in New Hampshire. Gilman is a founding researcher and organizer for the Open Society Foundation''s Transparency and Accountability Initiative and Harvard''s Gettysburg Project to revitalize 21st century civic engagement. She has worked as an advisor, researcher, and consultant to numerous non-profits and foundations including the World Bank, Case Foundation, Center for Global Development, and Google.org.

She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from the Department of Government at Harvard University and A.B. from the University of Chicago with highest honors in Political Science. She has published in numerous academic journals including in 2017 serving as the symposium editor on civic engagement and civic tech for PS: Political Science & Politics. She has several popular audience publications including the Boston Globe, Foreign Affairs, Slate, Stanford Social Innovation Review, The Washington Post and Vox. Gilman is a recipient of numerous awards, including: AAAS Big Data and Analytics Fellowship, Fulbright Scholarship, Environmental Working Group’s Excellence for Technology and Innovation, the Center for the American Presidency and Congress Presidential Fellowship and Harvard Kennedy School’s Democracy Fellow program at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

Education

• PhD, Harvard University
• MA, Harvard University
• AB, University of Chicago

"Where, precisely, are people congregating in public life in 2017 America?" Hollie Russon Gilman discusses three civic engagement models that can help magnify the voices of everyday citizens.

Hollie Russon Gilman discusses how “participatory budgeting” in local governments is a potentially powerful way to combat the anti-government, anti-elite furor that Trump has harnessed.