Innovate to Win: Hacking your Bureaucracy

CLPs: 1.5

Guest Moderator: Mr. Kelley, DAU Vice President 

Event Series Moderator: Dr. Marina Theodotou

Speakers: Marina Nitze, Nick Sinai  

Event description:

What if scaling innovation at the Department of Defense, one of the largest bureaucracies in the world, was attainable? Join us in this inaugural episode of "Innovate to Win" hosted by DAU Vice President Mr. Frank Kelley and hear from Marina Nitze and Nick Sinai, co-authors of "Hack your bureaucracy" discuss their experiences and share their tested and winning tactics from Harvard, the world of venture capital, the Department of Veteran's Affairs, and the White House, on how to successfully navigate your bureaucracy and scale innovation forward. 

                          Frank Kelley

As the Vice President of Defense Acquisition University, Mr. Kelley oversees how DAU leverages content, technologies and scale to develop, curate, and deliver learning experiences that empower the 176,000 members of the DoD workforce to give our warfighters a decisive edge. Prior to this role, Mr. Kelley served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy Unmanned Systems from October 2015 to June 2018. Mr. Kelley joined the civil service in 2015 following a 32-year career as a United States Marine.

                Dr. Marina Theodotou

Dr. Marina Theodotou leads DAU's Innovate to Win initiative which inspires and empowers the workforce to deepen their innovation skills, improve their innovation readiness to outsmart the adversary.

Over the last 30 years, Dr. Theodotou worked in three continents across industry, academia, not-profits, and now government where she leads cross-functional teams and together tackle wicked problems at the intersection of learning, innovation, and defense.

Dr. Theodotou holds a Doctorate in education centering on organizational change and leadership from the University of Southern California

                           Marina Nitze

Marina Nitze, co-author of the new book Hack Your Bureaucracy, is currently a partner at Layer Aleph, a crisis response firm that specializes in restoring complex software systems to service. Marina is also a fellow at New America's New Practice Lab, where she works on improving America's foster care system through the Resource Family Working Group and Child Welfare Playbook. Marina was most recently the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs under President Obama, after serving as a Senior Advisor on technology in the Obama White House and as the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the U.S. Department of Education. She serves on the advisory boards of Foster America, Smartsheet, and Think of Us; created TaskTackler, the personal productivity app for Type-A personalities; and previously authored the book Business Efficiency for Dummies. She lives in Seattle, WA. 

                           Nick Sinai  

Nick Sinai is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center.  Nick helped found the U.S. Digital Corps, a new two-year federal fellowship for early-career technologists, launched in the summer of 2021.Nick is the co-author, with Marina Nitze, of Hack Your Bureaucracy: Get Things Done No Matter What Your Role On Any Team, published in 2022.Nick is also a Senior Advisor at Insight Partners and serves on the boards of Rebellion Defense, Shift5, Hawkeye360, and LeoLabs. He also serves as a Commissioner for the Atlantic Council's Commission on Defense Innovation Adoption.