Holly

Meet Taspia Khan! Taspia is in her junior year at Harvard, studying computer science and psychology, and joined us for the past semester as a software engineering intern. We've been grateful to have her work with us to improve our product and design, and we're excited for all the amazing ways she will have a positive impact in her career in AI, technology, and human-centered design and development! Thank you, Taspia! 👋 Tell us about yourself: “Hi, I’m Taspia! I’m currently a junior at Harvard, double majoring in computer science and psychology. I’m passionate about the intersection of these disciplines, which I like to call the “human side of tech.” This refers to how technology impacts individuals and society as a whole. From a young age, I’ve been passionate about advocacy and helping others. Through my coursework and experiences, I’ve realized that technology can be a powerful tool to achieve those goals.” 🏛️ Why Holly? “Holly’s commitment to meaningful impact resonated with me deeply, and this internship has been incredibly fulfilling. During my time at Holly, I had the opportunity to work directly with the engineering team on front-end development projects. Additionally, I explored the product and design side of tech, an area I had little prior experience in. I created my own designs using Figma and collaborated with the product team to make design and workflow decisions for the platform. Overall, this experience allowed me to engage with multiple parts of tech, from engineering to design, and deepened my understanding of how these areas come together to create impactful products.” If you're interested in joining Holly as an intern, we'll be searching for summer interns starting in the spring, and we're always looking for more engineering talent! #civictech #govtech #AI #internships #softwareengineering #product #socialimpact #hiring

🎉 So excited to share our new Substack: "Public Service: Designed with Data"! One thing I love about my job is learning the quirks of cities and counties all over the country (lately, learning a whole lot about Idaho's labor market!) and the public servants who keep them running. These are the most diversified organizations you can imagine, employing x-ray technicians, dog catchers, firefighters, microbiologists, and librarians. How can you not learn something new every day? I also love learning from other founders and operators about the craft of building a company -- especially the (hard) (necessary) (rewarding) craft of building for government users. We're starting the newsletter to share both kinds of learning. There's so much (SO MUCH) fascinating data to share, so many stories from public servants, and so many lessons we're learning as we build a company with a mission. Our hope is that more founders will take the plunge into government work, so follow along if you're considering it! #GovTech #CivicTech #PublicService #BuildingInPublic #AIStartups https://lnkd.in/emvmj_Ky

Fantastic piece on the scale of the hiring problem in local governments by Bloomberg CityLab reporter Patrick Sisson. Cherie and I didn't realize a year ago when we were starting Holly that local gov HR was headed into the spotlight! “No mayor can run for office on a campaign platform of, ‘I’m going to get the best public servants to come work for me,’” said Work for America founder and executive director, Caitlin Lewis. “But when you get into office on day one, if you don’t have people in critical roles, you can’t actually fulfill any of your campaign promises.” Governments are losing institutional knowledge and staff capacity right as their funding gets more uncertain. At the same time, the demands on local government to provide critical services is only growing. The slow (sometimes by design) hiring processes of the '70s and '80s worked when government jobs were top destinations, but local govs nowadays are increasingly reaching the end of a recruiting cycle empty-handed. Patrick Sisson's reporting resonates with what we're hearing from the 100+ governments we've spoken with over the last year. Many local govs, like Holly pilot partner Long Beach CA, are embracing technology to accelerate steps that have held hiring back by months. Great orgs like Work for America and U.S. Digital Response are helping bring top talent into critical roles. And great publications like Bloomberg CityLab are elevating the problem nationwide. I think an all-of-the-above coalition will be needed to revitalize public orgs in America. The pieces are coming together! #localgov #govtech

Meet Marina Qu! Marina is in her final year at Harvard, studying economics and psychology, and joined us for the past semester as a business development intern. We've been grateful to have her work with us to share with cities what we can do for their hiring practices, and excited for all the amazing ways she will have a positive impact in her career! Thank you, Marina! Tell us about yourself: "Hello! I'm Marina, a senior at Harvard studying Economics and Psychology. I’m passionate about startups and new innovations that drive social change. This interest stems from my experiences, including my internship at the City of Boston this past summer, where I explored how the public sector interacts with innovation to address complex problems. These insights inspired me to further engage with initiatives at the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship, and public good." Why Holly: "Holly caught my attention with its innovative approach to real-world challenges. My experience reaching out to cities and building tools to streamline our outreach process allowed me to do impactful work, gaining a deeper understanding how startups can create meaningful change." If you're interested in joining Holly - we are hiring for a Founding Engineer!

Over 100 civically engaged technologists in the city came together at Fractal Tech this weekend to talk gov hiring, public meeting reporting, O1 visas, and top-notch census tract level mapping -- what better way to spend a Saturday night?? Dorothy Ren, Daniel Golliher, and Alex Bores led an amazing panel and we were lucky to demo Holly. I asked the crowd if they'd applied for a government job before, and a smattering of hands came up. A few more expected to apply in the next couple years. Who was driven away by slow, clunky hiring processes? Everybody else raised their hands. Broken hiring is keeping brilliant people from applying to the 1.1 million vacant government jobs in the US, and it's blocking our cities and counties from improving services. An abundance agenda starts with bringing the strongest public servants to jobs at all levels so we can build faster and serve with more empathy. If you want to learn about NYC and get more involved in your community, check out Maximum New York! #AIforGovernment #GovTech #NYC

Last Saturday night at Fractal Tech was civic tech demo night + a discussion on abundance politics with Alex Bores of the New York State Assembly and Daniel Golliher from Maximum New York. Some highlights: -BTS of the powerful software powering the NYT's incredible maps (kudos Colin Miller) -Team Holly, leading the government hiring charge! (Cherie Chung and Brendan Hellweg) -Insights from Assemblymember Bores, who previously worked at Palantir Technologies and Promise. Incredible hearing from the only Assemblymember with a CS degree, let alone that sort of tech<>government experience. Shoutout to Jake Z. and Dorothy Ren for putting together such a special event. Paul Healy, Andrei S., Julia Pepper, Hannah Young

One of the highlights of the GovAI Coalition Summit last week in San Jose was getting to spend time with Cherie Chung and Brendan Hellweg, founders of Holly: an AI-native HRIS software. Why am I so energized by Holly? Huge + impactful problem. One of the most important ways to improve public services - and therefore the lives of all Americans - is to make sure talent is working on public problems. Public agencies access talent through procurement (contracting) - that's Pavilion's focus. And they also recruit public servants into direct government service. That's where Holly is focusing. Today, there are >1 million vacant government jobs. (At Pavilion, we see procurement teams facing ~30% vacancy rates!) Average time to hire in government is ~135 days, ~5x slower than the private sector. Through software, Holly aims to support the HR directors, analysts, and candidates building stronger public sector teams. Expert + empathetic founders. I've known Cherie Chung for nearly a decade - we're both Georgetown University grads and former World Economic Forum Global Shapers. She's a policy and government nerd with experience building venture-scale products. At Propel, Inc she was part of the early team simplifying benefits for millions of Americans. Together with Brendan Hellweg, who served in local government with the City of Baltimore, they have government and startup experience with empathy for public servants and the challenges they face. Building a company is hard. In my experience building Pavilion, your odds of sticking with it as a founder - and actually getting to see your vision come to life - are higher if you're obsessed with the problem and the value it unlocks for others if you get it right. This team is obsessed - and I'm looking forward to seeing how their work will benefit the ecosystem! If you're interested in joining an early stage #govtech startup, or you're in the public sector working on #hiring or #HR, check out this team.

Are robots taking our government jobs? Just leaving a wonderful panel at the GovAI Coalition on Workforce AI Readiness! Listening to today's panel of government leaders, a key theme emerged: AI in government isn't about replacing human connection - it's about enabling more of it. Through our work at Holly, we're seeing how automation of complex HR tasks creates space for direct outreach and the human touch in hiring and management. There's tremendous room for process improvement, automation, facilitation, acceleration, but the best public leaders are using it to guide their staff towards a more personal, direct connection to their constituents. That means more immediate answers to difficult questions, faster delivery of services, language access that captures nuance and local gov context, and so much more. Government jobs are changing, and they're turning away from the impersonal processes of bureaucracy into a more accessible and open public forum. Let's make it happen! Thank you to today's thought leaders for reinforcing the importance of human-centered AI adoption: Cynthia Teniente-Matson, David Bissainthe, Lee Wilcox, Ana Peralta Chammas, and Rangapriya (Priya) Kannan. It's clear that GovAI Coalition is where local leaders are making critical decisions that will shape the next generation of government jobs. #GovTech #PublicService #LocalGovernment #Innovation

Rather than asking "How do we prepare for AI", viewing AI as a job replacement threat, we should be asking “How can AI benefit government employees.” 💡 Insightful discussion about what a human-first approach to successful public sector AI adoption looks like at the AI Readiness: Workforce & Change Management panel at the GovAI Coalition Summit. To fully leverage government AI, we need to: • Create psychological safety - build "sandboxes" where employees can experiment, fail, and iterate • Shift from restrictive policies to values-based guidelines that encourage innovation • Develop "expert learners" who proactively identify opportunities to enhance their work with AI • Focus on AI as a "personal data assistant" that amplifies human capabilities • Ensure technology serves people, not the other way around Thanks to Cynthia Teniente-Matson, David Bissainthe, Lee Wilcox, Ana Peralta Chammas, and Rangapriya (Priya) Kannan for a thoughtful look into how AI can be a capacity builder to help government employees better serve their communities. Excited to keep building Holly with these principles in mind. #FutureofWork #GovAICoalition #GovTech #AI #PublicSector

Excited to share that Holly will join the inaugural GovAI Coalition Summit in San José this December 4-5! 🌟 We started Holly because we believe the public sector is ready for a new wave of technology and process innovation through AI, and we know that the stakes have never been higher to get it right. Along the way, we've witnessed powerful transformations validating the opportunity to support millions of public servants driving change in their communities. One of our partners went from a self-proclaimed AI skeptic to a “giddy” AI convert after seeing the potential of our product for streamlining his workflow. We can’t wait to join 600+ public servants who are at the forefront of this change, to learn about how they are embracing AI and the impact that it’s making in their communities, and how we can help. Drop a comment if you'll be there - we'd love to grab coffee and hear about your government's AI journey! ☕️ #GovAI #GovAICoalition #AIforGood #PublicSector #ResponsibleAI #GovTech #LocalGov #FutureOfWork