Obama Gets a Google Vet–But Not for CTO
by Peter Kafka
Posted on January 28, 2009 at 9:12 PM PT
Barack Obama has yet to announce who his chief technology officer will be. But he has hired a Silicon Valley exec for another role: Google product manager Katie Jacobs Stanton will be the new President’s “director of citizen participation,” starting in March, sources tell me.
What the job entails isn’t completely clear to me, but I gather that she plans on using Web tools to let, well, citizens participate in the Obama White House.
The model: Google’s “Moderator” tool, which let people submit questions for the Presidential debates, and was later used to let them suggest initiatives for the new administration via its Change.gov site.
No surprise, then, that Google Moderator was one of Stanton’s projects when she worked at Google’s elections group.
Per her LinkedIn bio, she’s also worked on Google Finance and Google’s Open Social initiative. And prior to joining Google (GOOG) in 2003 (which means she came on pre-IPO and is fully vested, if you’re doing the math), she was at Yahoo (YHOO) as a production manager and worked in Yahoo Finance.
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Comments
Congrats, Katie!
Posted by Zack Miller at January 29th, 2009 at 9:02 amIt is incredible to hear there is such a service being set-up actually !!
Best of luck to the lady inded … we need her to do very good!
On the other hand I am disappointed … with so many real eDemocracy experts and activists that have successfully led citizen participation initiatives in the US … its amazing that google frenzy takes over once more …
Posted by Chris Korakas at January 29th, 2009 at 11:22 amProduct Managers are not executives at Google. Per my understanding they are on about the same level as Engineers.
Thus this is quite a promotion for Stanton.
Posted by Rob Olson at January 29th, 2009 at 11:30 amI’m also wondering what qualifies her in any way to lead such an effort. Zero experience in anything related to citizen participation. But I guess the White House Google. I really thought the standards would be higher.
Posted by april pedersen at January 29th, 2009 at 2:28 pmGiven what I am certain will be a huge pay cut to move back into Public Service, I am so grateful that this woman took the job! Feels good to have smart people with connections serving in the department that they actually have a background in. It’s a ‘New Day’, indeed.
Posted by Crysta Krames at January 29th, 2009 at 2:42 pmAnyone skeptical of Katie’s qualifications to lead this charge doesn’t know Katie! Her purposeful, selfless focus and her tireless strive to motivate and compel people to get involved is unparalleled! She is akin to all that this administration promises to be: transparent, fair, good-natured, focused and hard working! You have no idea how lucky we are to have her. (And I am not a relative or even a close friend of hers.)
Posted by Jennifer Blakely at January 29th, 2009 at 5:18 pmPlease ask Katie to take a short working vacation back to Google Finance and have her fix it! The recent “Stock splits and dividend tracking” function in the portfolio feature is totally busted and makes existing portfolios essentially worthless. A rare GOOG boo-boo!
Posted by Ryck Lent at August 28th, 2009 at 8:37 am