Beth Noveck
Core Faculty
Beth Simone Noveck is a professor at Northeastern University, where she directs the Burnes Center for Social Change and its partner project, The GovLab. She is faculty at the Institute for Experiential AI, School of Law, and in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities, the College of Arts, Design, and Media, the College of Engineering, and affiliated faculty at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences.
Beth’s work focuses on using AI to reimagine participatory democracy and strengthen governance.
Among her many civic technology projects, she created Unchat, one of the first online platforms for democratic engagement, and Peer-to-Patent to connect scientists to policymakers to improve the patent process. Two decades before the Metaverse, she built Democracy Island in Second Life.
Previously, Beth served in the White House as the first United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer under President Obama. She founded the White House Open Government Initiative, which created policies and platforms, such as data.gov and challenge.gov, for making the federal government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. In 2020, Beth designed Ask a Scientist to crowdsource answers to COVID questions.
In 2024, Governor Phil Murphy appointed her as Chief AI Strategist for the State of New Jersey. Previously, she served as the state’s founding Chief Innovation Officer.
In addition to her current courses on AI for Impact, Beth is the founder of open, online courses such as Solving Public Problems for social innovators in over 100 countries, Open Justice for legal innovators, and InnovateUS for public sector professionals. The author of three earlier books, Beth’s newest book is Democracy Rebooted: How AI Can Save Democracy.