CAC: How did participating in the Congressional App Challenge contribute to your personal journey, career path, and accomplishments so far?

NL: The Congressional App Challenge was my first introduction to civic technology. During the awards ceremony held in Washington DC, I vividly remember the excitement of demoing my team’s app to my district’s House of Representatives. Listening to the speakers talk about developing technology in government and its challenges opened my eyes to a career in government. I realized how valuable my technical skillset is and promised myself to use it to contribute to a cause greater than myself where I can truly help others. I am immensely proud to have landed my role in the federal government doing exactly that for the American public.

CAC: Try to remember back to competing in the CAC – what was your app about and why did you create it?

NL: My team and I created sPeach, an iOS app designed to help hard-of-hearing individuals and English learners to practice their speech. At the time, I was inspired by my experience volunteering in my town’s deaf and hard-of-hearing community, where I learned about the struggles individuals faced learning how to speak. sPeach provides pronunciation practice with varying levels of difficulty, where the user records a pronunciation of a word or phrase on the screen and the app tells the user if the word was said correctly. Using Apple’s iOS Speech API, we wanted to create an accessible way for users to practice their pronunciation at their fingertips. 

CAC: What are you most proud of in your academic or professional career thus far?

NL: I am proud to have started my career in the federal government through the U.S. Digital Corps program. It is an honor to be part of launching the Open Source Program Office at CMS, where I build open source software tools (OSS) and establish OSS best practices in the agency. Through this work, I got the opportunity to speak about my work at Grace Hopper Conference, Open Source Summit North America, and Code for America. I am proud to be doing work I never imagined I’d have the chance to do, and I’m excited to continue advancing the role of open source in government.

CAC: Let’s look into the future – where do you hope to be in 2035?

NL:I see myself working in government, continuing to do open source, either by developing OSS solutions as a Senior Software Engineer, shaping tech policy as an Open Source Policy Advisor, or maybe even leading an Open Source Program Office.

CAC: What excites you most about the future of technology and innovation?

NL: I am excited about the transformative potential of AI in healthcare. From assisting with diagnoses to enabling personalized medicine, AI can significantly support the work of medical professionals to deliver care more effectively. Since AI relies on large, high-quality datasets, a critical focus is to first improve healthcare interoperability to ensure data can be shared seamlessly across systems. With improved data-sharing along with proper safeguards and oversight, AI can make healthcare become more accessible, equitable, and patient-centered.