Clay Johnson

Clay Johnson has spent the last decade working on making government more responsive and accessible to ordinary people. He is a writer, thinker, and father to two boys. Most recently, he was the founder and chairman of the Department of Better Technology, a company that helps governments more effectively deliver digital services to its constituents. Prior to that he was a Presidential Innovation Fellow in the Obama Administration, working to help improve access for small internet businesses to government contracts.

Johnson was one of four founders of Blue State Digital, the technology company that spun out of Governor Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign, and went on to build the politically transformative website, BarackObama.com in 2008. He was also the Director of Sunlight Labs at the Sunlight Foundation, the organization that pioneered the use of technology to open government data.

Johnson is also the author of the national bestselling book “The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption,” which explores the parallels between industrialized agriculture and industrialized media. He’s been a commentator on NPR, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News, and his editorials have appeared the LA Times and the New York Times. He lives with his wife and children in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia.