Robin Carnahan

At 18F, Carnahan helped federal, state and local government agencies improve customer facing digital services and cut costs.  In particular, she helped educate and empower non-technical executives on defining outcomes and implementing digital modernization strategies to transform their organizations, mitigate risk and deliver cost-effective results for customers.  Using human-centered design and agile development, budgeting and procurement approaches, her teams worked in a wide-range of high impact sectors, including healthcare, child welfare, paid family leave services and deployment of smart cities technologies.

As Secretary of State, Carnahan served as the state’s Chief Election Official and State Securities Regulator responsible for providing in-person and on-line services to 400,000 businesses, 116 local election authorities, 4 million voters, 134,000 brokers and financial professionals and hundreds of thousands of other customers. An essential part of her job was leading the office’s technology modernization efforts and managing a large service delivery team of 250 employees and 7 operating divisions.

Robin serves on a number of non-profit and corporate boards including the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs which provides global support for democratic institutions, citizen participation, openness and accountability in government; and the LaunchCode Foundation which provides training and apprenticeships for non-traditionally credentialed tech talent.  Robin was in the inaugural class of the Aspen Institute’s Rodel Public Leadership Fellowship, served as Co-Chair of the Democracy Fund’s National Advisory Committee, was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and Senior Fellow at the Harris School of Public Service and served as a Senior Advisor at the global strategy firm Albright Stonebridge Group.  She holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from William Jewell College and J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Robin frequently speaks, writes and testifies about government innovation through smarter use of technology.