Understanding Community Ecosystems: Lessons from Puerto Rico
Virtual | 09.15.2023 | 11:10 - 11:30 EST
What is Community?
Solving pain points of communities through sourcing ideas and co-creating through cross-sector collaboration is the source of innovation. This talk will explore the case for Open Innovation– how and matching expertise, with lived experiences can bring government, academia, communities, social sector and tech together through see exponentially more solutions to the same problems many communities face. Strategic, managed exchanges of information with actors outside of the boundaries of an organization can help catalyze change for those who have the technology or innovations to solve big problems and those who experience them. Through agile processes, this talk explores how bringing together communities, governments, technologists and the private sector help catalyze data-driven digital solutions to solve our nation’s most pressing challenges, an unique examples from The Opportunity Project: Puerto Rico.
Speaker
Lorena Molina-Irizarry, Senior Advisor for Puerto Rico, Department of Commerce
Lorena Molina-Irizarry serves as Senior Advisor for Puerto Rico Strategy and Implementation to the Department of Commerce and the U.S. Census Bureau. Additionally, Mrs Molina-Irizarry and served as liaison to the White House Puerto Rico Initiative, integrating the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts around economic growth for Puerto Rico. Prior, she also served as Senior Advisor to the American Rescue Plan (ARP) implementation team at the White House in the implementation of ARP equities and investments in Puerto Rico, like the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit. Previously, she served as Director of Operations at the Census Open Innovation Labs within the U.S. Census Bureau, bringing together technologists, government and communities through open-tech collaboration, human-centered design and innovation models, tapping into the power of open data and tech for good; implementing open-innovation initiatives like the Open Data for Good Grand Challenge and scaling The Opportunity Project. In this capacity she also managed strategic partnerships with Big Tech, media, entertainment and civic-tech organizations to protect the integrity of the 2020 Census, creating data-sharing initiatives through public-private partnerships, and scaling innovation programs to address misinformation/disinformation about the decennial census and increasing data-driven decision making at all levels, across sectors and industries— this work led to the creation of the first ever Trust & Safety team in government. Previously, she served as the Deputy Chief of the National Partnerships Program, creating and implementing enterprise-wide infrastructure for engaging and collaborating with national, regional, and local partners in industry, tech, academia and the civil sector to increase open data use and awareness— promoting the importance of the 2020 Census as the cornerstone of our democracy, and other Census Bureau economic, demographic, geospatial programs. Prior to the decennial census she also served as the Technology Communications Liaison for the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of the U.S. Census Bureau, leading technology, cybersecurity, innovation communications and public relations for the agency. She has been instrumental in architecting and implementing innovation strategies across government and in local communities, implementing strategic workforce planning initiatives and building civic digital talent pipelines within and outside government.