Nick Sinai

Nick Sinai was the Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States. He assumed this role under the second Chief Technology Officer of the United States, Todd Park, and continued under Megan Smith. Sinai was formerly a Senior Advisor to Park as well as to the first U.S. CTO, Aneesh Chopra, starting in 2011.
Nick is currently a Venture Partner at Insight Venture Partners, a global technology venture capital and private equity firm, and an inaugural Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

As U.S. Deputy CTO, Nick led President Obama’s Open Data Initiatives to liberate data to fuel innovation and economic growth. A prominent advocate and frequent speaker for Open Data, he has said “government data is a valuable asset and should be available wherever possible” and that data “should be thought of as infrastructure." He contributed to President Obama’s Executive Order 13642, the re-launch of Data.gov, Project Open Data, the U.S. Digital Services Playbook, the G8 Open Data Charter, the White House Big Data report, and the U.S. Open Data Action Plan.

Nick led Administration efforts to give Americans easier access to their own data and to advance the idea that Americans deserve secure access to their own healthcare (Blue Button), energy, student loan, tax, and other personal data in machine-readable formats. Nick launched the White House’s Green Button Initiative, a public-private effort to provide electricity customers online access to their own energy usage data.

He led the Open Government Initiative and developed the second U.S. Open Government Plan, to ensure that the federal government is more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. Improvements underway as part of the plan include greater fiscal transparency, opening up the We the People online petition platform, and improving service for Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Nick was part of the U.S. delegation at the Open Government Partnership Head of State event, where President Obama unveiled new transparency commitments to improve accessibility to federal financial data, improve federal digital services, strengthen patient privacy in the health care system, and develop a federal open source software policy.

Nick also helped start and grow the Presidential Innovation Fellows program, which brings tech-savvy entrepreneurs into the federal government for year-long "tours of duty", with a particular focus on data innovation projects. He also played a key role in developing the Administration’s $4.5B grid modernization strategy to build a smarter and more secure electric grid, and helped develop President Obama’s ConnectED initiative to bring fast broadband and digital learning to 99% of students.

Prior to the White House, Nick served at the Federal Communications Commission, where he helped draft the National Broadband Plan. The plan included recommendations that the U.S. should modernize the electrical grid, improve the energy efficiency of the IT industry, and unleash “energy innovation in homes and buildings by making energy data readily accessible by consumers.” President Obama put forth his recommendation that “Congress should make clear that state, regional and local governments can build broadband networks” as a policy proposal in the build up to his 2015 State of the Union.

Nick was a venture capitalist at Polaris Partners and Lehman Brothers Venture Partners (now Tenaya Capital). Nick also served in executive and advisory roles with two Boston area start-up technology companies, and served as a senior advisor to the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.

Nick earned an M.B.A from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and an A.B. from Harvard University.

Nick has been named Top 25 most influential people under 40 in gov and tech, to the 25th edition of the Federal 100, to the Networked Grid 100: The Movers and Shakers of the Smart Grid, and to the FedScoop 50 for Federal Leadership.