By Colleen V. Chien, Founder, Paper Prisons Initiative and Professor, Berkeley Law School
What do the Supreme Court’s landmark civil rights decisions have in common with the rescue of Healthcare.gov or the delivery of effective digital services during the COVID pandemic?
Each transformed the lives of millions of Americans—and each was made possible, in part, by skilled volunteers applying their expertise in service of the public good. Supported by their employers, lawyers and technologists have long taken short- or part-time “tours of duty,” leveraging their professional skills to advance justice, access, and equity.
But in law, pro bono service is institutionalized: embedded in legal education, supported by firms, coordinated by dedicated staff, and engrained in the culture. In tech and data science, skills-based “tech for good”—what I call tech bono—remains largely ad hoc, driven by individual initiative rather than durable institutional pathways.
This wasn’t always true in law. Decades ago, legal pro bono looked much like tech for good does today: informal, opportunistic, and lacking professional status. Over time, it evolved into a core feature of the profession. Can the same thing happen in tech and data and what might this evolution look like?
This question is at the heart of a project I’m excited to be launching with Chris Wiggins focused on tech bono and what it would take to build the set of cultural and institutional commitments that are required to make durable experiences in and pathways to serving others and the public ubiquitous in college and beyond — analogous to how pro bono operates in law.
When I worked with Todd Park at the White House, he emphasized a simple but powerful idea: give any technologist who wants to help a clear way to do so, using their particular superpowers. Visionaries like Jennifer Pahlka, Mikey Dickerson, Erie Meyer, Cori Zarek, Mina Hsiang, and John Paul Farmer helped turn that idea into reality through programs like the Presidential Innovation Fellowship, US Digital Service, 18F, and US Digital Response. These efforts are extraordinary—but in tech, they remain the exception. In law, comparable pathways are the norm.
As a law student at UC Berkeley, I represented indigent clients, filed asylum petitions, and did research to support litigation to advance access to generic HIV drugs in South Africa. As a lawyer, I protected voting rights, helped clients win contract disputes, and filed clemency petitions—experiencing what Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative calls the transformative power of proximity, a north star for finding purpose that has served me throughout my 20+ year career. Not all lawyers do pro bono, but those who want to can choose from opportunities ranging from a few hours of direct service to decades-long commitments that reshape the law itself.
Through the Paper Prisons initiative, I’ve also seen just how many computer science and data science students want to do for-good work—and how few supported pathways exist for them. Important efforts are emerging (including PIT-UN), and as AI puts long-standing goals like access to justice and equal opportunity within closer reach, it feels like the right time to elevate what’s working and identify what still needs to be built.
I’m thrilled to be partnering with Chris, a Columbia University data science professor, NYT Chief Data Scientist, co-founder of the The Data Science Institute at Columbia University and co-founder of hackNY.org, which he co-launched post-financial crisis to “keep kids off the street” – meaning Wall Street, given that so many had witnessed the crumbling of the American dream at the hands of data science.
Our shared goal: help ensure that tech students and professionals who want to make a positive difference are supported in their journeys. A few of our initial conversations with changemakers have underscored the stakes and possibilities:
- Prof. Amelia Winger-Bearskin (hackNY, Florida State/Hunter College) is using AI and storytelling to advance climate justice and address homelessness. Check out her really cool work at: https://www.studioamelia.com/about
- Amy Quispe (hackNY, USDS, Google) realized her “best work” came from fixing a problem in her own life that could simultaneously solve it for the entire country (profile on her why: https://usdigitalservice.medium.com/why-we-serve-amy-quispe-9c7b3a0c309c)
- Andrew McLaughlin (entrepreneur and founder, now COO of SandboxAQ, former deputy White House CTO) has helped found and scale AccessNow which provides internet access, technical support, and grantmaking to advance human rights in the digital age
- The Harris Social Impact Fellowship —an 11-month program at University of Chicago training recent grads to use data and evidence for public good just launched and supported by Ben Appen (founding partner of Magnitude Capital, philanthropist):
Inspiring models can also be found at UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society (e.g. in the Data Discovery program) and Columbia. We’re just getting started and eager to learn from existing efforts—at universities, nonprofits, firms, and beyond—and to hear what work we should be studying. If you’re building, teaching, funding, or participating in tech-for-good pathways, we look forward to being in conversation!
