CV

Objective

I am a program manager and data analyst focused on govtech and digital public service design. I blend tech policy, responsible innovation, and technical expertise to drive impact by using technology to solve problems related to social justice, sustainability, and public policy.

With over a decade of social science research, I apply both qualitative and quantitative methods to create data-driven solutions that improve public services.

Education

Viterbi School of Engineering 2021

• Data Analytics Certificate

Middlebury College   2018

• Summer Language School, Russian                 

Aberystywth University  2015

• Master’s International Politics

University of Rochester 2014

• Bachelors of Arts: History, International Relations, Russian

Experience

AI and Data Governance Consultant: 

Remote | October 2018 - December 2021, January 2023-Present

Self-Employed

• Content creator for GovTech and Government data visualization (2024-present)

• Analyzed and designed visualizations from NYC’s algorithmic open-source compliance data (2024)

• Published 12 articles on the beneficial uses of AI and emerging technology in society (2018-present)

• Designing and implementing BetaNYC’s Associate Board bylaws and standard operating procedure (2024-present)

• Advised product managers at Rossum AI on policy implications of their AI tool, quoted in Read/Write (2021)

• Collaborated with water engineers to develop an XPRIZE prize design on black-to-potable water technology (2020)

Progressive Policy Institute: 

Washington, D.C. | January 2022 - December 2023

Economic and Data Policy Analyst, Director of Innovation Frontier Project

• Lead data analyst for Investment Heroes Project. 

• Managed ten years of Investment Heroes Project data, over 130,000 data points

• Pioneered a Python script for automatic data collection using the Security and Exchange Commission API, the first in the project’s 10-year history

• Supervised junior staff to clean and impute Investment Heroes Data

• Set emerging technology policy strategy for PPI, Program Director managing a budget of $100,000

• Wrote 10 papers, blogs, articles, and reports on AI, privacy and data protection

Global Student Embassy:

Berkeley, CA | August 2016 - August 2018                                         

Director of Operations, Travel and Outreach Manager

• Managed client database of over 10,000 clients

• Updated and maintained entity-relationship diagram for client database

• Updated and maintained documentation for Salesforce database as well as educating non-technical staff database use and best practices

• Program manager with $70,000 budget for international development projects between California and Latin America

• Developed sustainable development training and programming content for 10 projects across 4 countries

Senator Bernie Sanders:

Burlington, VT | January 2015 - June 2016

Constituent Advocate Intern

• Managed 20 constituent advocacy cases for the Senator’s district office

• Liaised with the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Corrections, and the Social Security Administration to help Vermont constituents engage with federal agencies

Select Projects and Speaking Engagements

Data Projects: https://github.com/jshapi16

NYC Administrative Code LLM,

https://github.com/jshapi16/nyc_admin_llm

• A domain-specific large language model (LLM) that uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) 

• Currently Retrieves Title 1, 8 and 10 of the NYC Administrative Code

• Uses flan-t5-base for retrieval, claude-3-7-sonnet for question/answering, bart-base for embedding

NYC Algorithmic Tools Compliance Analysis, https://github.com/jshapi16/NYC_alg_compliance

• Using the reporting data from Local Law 35, 2022, which requires city agencies to report on their algorithmic usage. Performed data cleaning ran NLP analysis on descriptive columns to extract vendor information from descriptive columns. Created data visualizations using Matplotlib, which were published on  @GovTechGal instagram. 

• Languages, libraries: Python, Matplotlib, NTLK, GenismSeaborn

Investment Heroes 2022: Washington, DC,  https://www.progressivepolicy.org/publication/investment-heroes-2023/

• Study Question: How to measure Fortune 500 companies' U.S. capital spending?

• Languages, libraries, API: Python, Pandas, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) API

• Methods and Results: Lead data analyst for a dataset with ten years of data featuring 13,000 new data points per year. I wrote a Python script to pull new financial data from the SEC Edgar Filing API. I then performed statistical analysis using a proprietary methodology to estimate companies' U.S. capital spending.

Policy Research:

• Why is digital privacy so complicated?

• The UK Online Safety Bill is well-intentioned but will undermine privacy.

• An overview of global AI regulation and what's next.

• Regulating technology as a public good.

Op-Eds:

• The Hill Opinion: We need to protect children’s data online — but let’s protect everyone’s data while we’re at it

• The Hill Opinion: New digital privacy bills won’t protect women seeking abortions

Panelist/Speaker:

• Sprite+ Hub, An Overview of American Digital Privacy

• Women's History Month Forum at the House of Representatives, Privacy in a Post-Roe World, March 2023 

Interview/Quotes

• Bloomberg, Musk, Zuckerberg Lead Parade of Tech Titans to Senate AI Event

• Bloomberg Government, What to Know in Washington: Congress Faces A.I. Learning Curve

• Politico, "How Governments can keep up with the future."

• Channel News Asia Documentary, "The Deepening US-China Tech War"

Languages

English (Fluent)

Spanish (Advanced)

Russian (Intermediate)

Chinese (Beginner)

Fellowships, Awards, and Affiliations

• BetaNYC Associate Board Member (Co-Chair of Governance) 2024-present

• Sprite+ Expert Fellow (2023-Present)

• Rotary Global Grant Scholar, 2014-2015

• Americorp’s Urban Fellow, 2012

• Fulbright US-UK Summer Institute, Wales, 2011