Beeck Center Announces New Innovation and Incubation Fellowship

WASHINGTON, October 31, 2024 – The Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University today announced a new program aimed at researching and testing innovative ideas at the forefront of the ever-evolving field of civic technology. The Innovation and Incubation (I+I) Fellowship furthers the Beeck Center’s work to identify and establish human-centered solutions that make government services more accessible and equitable for those who need them most. 

From its inception, innovation and experimentation have been core to the DNA of the Beeck Center. This year—as the Beeck Center celebrates a decade of impact—they are proud to launch the I+I Fellowship, a 12-24 month engagement that allows the Center to keep experimenting and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in civic technology. 

The Beeck Center has also announced Maya Uppaluru Mechenbier as the first I+I fellow. Joining the Center from the White House, where she served as a project lead for the U.S. Digital Service (USDS), Mechenbier is a product counsel and policy expert in health care, digital innovation, and social safety net programs. As an I+I fellow at the Beeck Center, she leads research on implementing human-centered design to support teen and young mothers—a highly vulnerable population—in meeting their educational goals, pursuing family-sustaining career pathways, building wealth, and caring for their children. 

“As we celebrate the Beeck Center’s 10th anniversary, we are proud to announce the new Innovation and Incubation Fellowship. Through this Fellowship, we look forward to providing an opportunity for experts to research, test, and learn, particularly in areas where there are gaps in the field or where there are underserved populations, helping to ensure continuous innovation in our efforts to enable governments to better meet people’s needs,” commented Lynn Overman, Executive Director of the Beeck Center. “Maya’s research, focused on identifying a two-generation approach to advancing mobility and opportunity for teen parents and their children, is an ideal project to launch the new Fellowship.  We are thrilled to welcome Maya to the Beeck Center and the greater Georgetown community.”

Prior to her appointment at the Beeck Center, Mechenbier was a project lead at USDS, where she launched the “Birth of a Child” Life Experience portfolio of projects at the White House with the goal of improving the experience of new parents in the United States, focusing on equity and inclusion. Maya also served at USDS in 2016, providing policy and regulatory support for the Quality Payment Program team at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and with the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) at the White House in 2015, where she helped to launch President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other partner agencies. 

“I am so honored to join the Beeck Center as its first Innovation and Incubation Fellow,” said Maya Uppaluru Mechenbier. “I’m looking forward to building upon their legacy of accelerating human-centered solutions that improve people’s lives by exploring and developing new insights about promising and scalable interventions that improve economic outcomes for young families.”

The I+I Fellowship is supported by Ballmer Group—who recently made an $8 million gift to enhance the Beeck Center’s work to strengthen governments’ ability to deliver critical services to communities—and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Additional funding will support the expansion and impact of the I+I Fellowship program at large. To learn more, please visit https://beeckcenter.georgetown.edu/projects/innovation-incubation-fellowship/

About the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation

The Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University seeks to improve people’s daily lives by helping governments utilize data, design, technology, and policy to better meet the needs of their residents. An anchor of Georgetown University’s Tech and Society Initiative, the Beeck Center works alongside public, private, and non-profit organizations to identify and establish human-centered solutions that help government services work better for everyone, especially the most vulnerable and underserved populations. The Beeck Center’s work was recognized on Fast Company’s 2023 Next Big Things in Tech list. For more information, please visit beeckcenter.georgetown.edu.

Press Contact: 

Elle O’Brien, Original Strategies
elle@originalstrategies.com

Jessica Yabsley, Beeck Center
jessica.yabsley@georgetown.edu