Alexis Wichowski

Alexis Wichowski is an adjunct associate professor in Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, teaching in the Technology, Media, and Communications (TMaC) specialization. She is also Press Secretary and Senior Advisor at New York City’s newly created Department of Veterans’ Services, providing support to the City’s half million veterans and their families. She has previously served New York City as a Disaster Relief Field Responder, before and during 9/11.

Previous government work includes Program Officer for the US Department of State’s Office of eDiplomacy, Diplomatic Innovation Division under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and, most recently, Director of Media Analysis & Strategy at the Permanent Mission of the United States to the United Nations. She has been awarded a Presidential Management Fellowship, two Meritorious Honor Awards, and a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship. Outside government, Wichowski has worked in media impact research, information architecture development, academic book indexing, web coding, theater production, foreign sitcoms, and pretzel vending.

Wichowski regularly conducts research and writes about the impact of media, technology and government, with recent publications such as, “Netstates rule the world. Ignore them at your peril,” in WIRED, “Hack the bureaucracy: a user’s guide to getting things done in government,” in GovExec, “Social Diplomacy, or How Diplomats Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tweet," in Foreign Affairs, "What Government Can and Should Learn from Hacker Culture," in The Atlantic, "So long, smoke & mirrors! Digital diplomats wear no clothes," in the London School of Economics Review of Books, and a chapter in Digital Diplomacy: Theory & Practice, entitled “ ‘Secrecy is for losers’: why diplomats should embrace openness to protect national security.”

Current SIPA courses include E-Government & Digital Diplomacy (winner of SIPA’s “Top 5 Course Award,” selected by students out of over 200 courses), Technology, National Security & The Citizen, and a recent capstone with the US Congress on technological authoritarianism in China. Wichowski is a faculty contact for the campus student groups "SIPAVets" and "Digital & Cyber Group @ SIPA".

Wichowski holds a PhD in Information Science from the University at Albany''s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and a BA in Chinese from Connecticut College, completed in three years cum laude. She lives in Brooklyn with her family, swims / bikes / runs, and reads science fiction voraciously.

Additional details available at awichowski.com

Education

• PhD in Information Science, University of Albany
• BA in Chinese, Connecticut College