Mark Headd

Mark is a writer, speaker and thought leader on communication technologies and open government. Self taught in programming, he has been developing telephone, mobile and speech recognition applications for almost 10 years, and is a certified developer with the VoiceXML forum. In August 2012, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter selected Mark as the City's first ever Chief Data Officer to oversee open data and transparency initiatives. He served for three years as the chief policy and budget advisor for the State of Delaware’s Department of Technology and Information. He has also served as Director of the Delaware Government Information Center, as Technology Adviser to former Delaware Governor Thomas R. Carper, and in the New York State Senate as a budget and finance analyst. Mark has built open government software applications for the District of Columbia, the Sunlight Foundation, the New York State Senate, and the cities of New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Baltimore and Philadelphia. He is an organizer and participant in civic hacking events across the country. He holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and is a former adjunct instructor at the University of Delaware teaching a course in electronic government.