Park, Todd, 1973-
President Obama today announced that he has asked U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President Todd Park to take on a new role for the Administration as a technology advisor based in Silicon Valley. Park will begin the new role in September after he and his family have returned home to California.
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Park was born in 1973 in Salt Lake City, Utah to South Korean immigrant parents. He graduated from the Columbus Academy in 1990. In that year he was named a Presidential Scholar. He attended Harvard as an economics major where he met his future wife, Amy, with whom he has two children. He graduated magna cum laude and a Phi Beta Kappa.
In March 2012, President Obama appointed Todd Park to replace Aneesh Chopra as the United States Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President. After assuming this role, Park worked with a variety of agencies across the federal government to replicate the Datapalooza in their respective domains.
Inspired by Code for America, Park also started the Presidential Innovation Fellows program, designed to bring top innovators from outside government for focused "tours of duty" with federal innovators on game-changing projects. The idea of the program is to combine the experience of citizen change agents and government change agents to tackle specific challenges at high speed, delivering significant results within six months.
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Todd Park is the former United States Chief Technology Officer and in that role served as an Assistant to the President. Todd joined the Administration in August 2009 as Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In this role, he served as a change agent and “entrepreneur-in-residence,” helping HHS harness the power of data, technology, and innovation to improve the health of the nation. Prior to joining HHS, Mr. Park co-founded Athenahealth and co-led its development into one of the most innovative health IT companies in the industry. He also co-founded Castlight, a web-based health care shopping service for consumers. Mr. Park has also served in a volunteer capacity as a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he focused on health IT and health reform policy, and as senior health care advisor to Ashoka, a leading global incubator of social entrepreneurs, where he helped start Healthpoint Services, a venture to bring affordable telehealth, drugs, diagnostics, and clean water to rural India. Mr. Park graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College with an A.B. in economics.