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By Mallory Knodel —

Shaping a Profession, Building a Community

Exploring how practitioners define public interest technology, and what it takes to sustain and grow the field.

Shaping a Profession, Building a Community
Photo by Ross Sneddon / Unsplash

By Mallory Knodel

Public Interest Technology (PIT) is best understood by listening to the people who practice it every day. Too often, conversations about technology and society happen without those who are actually building and applying tools inside organizations working for the public good. Together with my colleagues Mallika Balakrishnan and Lauren M. Chambers at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), I set out in a recently published paper to shift that balance by learning directly from practitioners themselves.

This work was inspired by CDT’s experience redesigning a public interest technologist role, my role. In 2020, we set out to redesign the role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO). The CTO had been critical to the organization for almost 20 years, but it had grown organically, not strategically. We wanted the role to be better set up for big debates about technology and public policy. When we started redesigning the role, our technologists were grouped together on their own team. This meant they weren’t always working closely with colleagues tackling issues like human rights, online privacy, or free speech. So we changed things. Instead of isolating technologists, we spread them out across teams so they could collaborate more closely with the wider organization. This experience made us curious: were other organisations facing the same problems? We found out they were. That’s why we decided to do this research.

Together, we designed a project to document how public interest technologists describe their work, the challenges they face, and the values that keep them in the field. Our focus was on technologists embedded in civil society: people who might be the only technical expert in a human rights group, or one of a handful in an advocacy organization. 

To better understand their experiences, we conducted in-depth interviews with practitioners and then brought together a roundtable of leaders in the field to test and refine our findings. (See the paper for full details on our methodology.) By placing these perspectives at the center, we aimed to provide a clearer picture of the profession as it is being shaped from the inside out, and to suggest ways to strengthen and sustain it into the future. What follows is a summary of some of the key findings.

Our Findings

We conducted this research project with the goal of contributing to a shared story–told by practitioners themselves–about the present needs and future priorities of public interest technology as a field. Our interviews and roundtable discussions revealed two overarching themes shaping the field today: community and professionalization. Practitioners described the importance of building relational spaces, opportunities for collaboration, and shared values that sustain their work, even when they are the only technologist in an organization. At the same time, they highlighted challenges around legitimacy, legibility, and access that make it difficult to recognize PIT as a profession with clear career pathways. Together, these themes point to a field already defined by its principles and practices, but still struggling with the structural support needed to ensure its long-term sustainability. 

Community

Practitioners described community as the foundation that allows them to do their work effectively. Many stressed how isolating it can feel to be the only technologist in a civil society organisation, and how much they rely on peer networks, mentorship, and informal exchanges to stay connected. 

Opportunities to collaborate across organisations were seen as especially valuable, creating space for collective problem-solving and mutual support. Participants also underlined that what makes these communities meaningful is not just the exchange of skills but a shared commitment to values that put people first. 

Multiple participants said that an effective community of practice would prioritize the ability to teach and learn within the community. One participant described the importance of maintaining “connections to the local grassroots communities that....created these independent learning environments where we learn and teach each other.” The technologists we spoke to, across the board, emphasized that having opportunities to continue learning was a crucial part of succeeding in their work.

Participants stressed that technologists need to be motivated by commitment to people and communities, not profit. Without this alignment, a true sense of community is harder to build. Some also noted gaps between nonprofit and for-profit sectors, and between technology providers, which raise broader questions about what career pathways in public interest technology should look like.

Professionalization

Practitioners also spoke about the need for clearer structures to make PIT a viable long-term career, and lamented lack of structured training pipelines and uncertain career paths: as one reflected about their experience, “we still don’t have a great model for people who want to do this in their lives. What do you study? Where do you go after? We’re all creating our own way forward,” making the field difficult to enter and sustain. This uncertainty, combined with resource constraints in many organizations, undermines long-term engagement in PIT work.

We also discovered that public interest technology is not always legible to external stakeholders. Some practitioners told us that “people have no clue that this role exists,” leading to their contributions being undervalued by others. They also often find themselves siloed in specialist teams, separate from core decision-making structures, constraining their ability to contribute across their full range of expertise.

Lastly, participants noted the importance of supporting multiple, and especially non-technical, pathways into public interest technology. Multiple participants bought up the feeling that effective public interest technology work often starts from the public interest side. For many, the path into “policy seems harder” but that “it’s not that hard” to introduce technical concepts to “non-tech audiences.”

Strengthening PIT as a profession means developing recognized entry points, creating more secure career pipelines, and ensuring that the field is understood and valued both inside and outside civil society. 

Moving the Field Forward

From listening to practitioners, we learned that public interest technology is already defined by its values, collaborative mindset, and strong sense of community. But we also heard clearly that sustaining and expanding this field requires more than individual commitment. It requires building structures that support practitioners over the long term.

Strengthen Institutional Support

We found that clearer career pipelines, shared language, and formal recognition are crucial for making PIT work visible and legitimate. Without these, technologists are left to create their own way forward, often at personal cost. Professionalization means more than titles or credentials: it means developing accessible entry points, securing adequate funding, and ensuring competitive compensation so that talented people can choose this path and stay in it. Important beginnings are already visible. Sixty-four American higher education institutions are now part of the Public Interest Technology University Network, with dedicated programs, courses, and even career fairs. Harvard’s Public Interest Technology Lab and New York University’s PIT career fair are further signs of momentum. Fellowships, like those run by Public Knowledge or the Ada Lovelace Institute, are helping technologists step into civil society roles. Groups like All Tech Is Human are broadening access through mentoring and job boards. These initiatives show what is possible, but they need to be scaled and resourced more consistently.

Build Stronger Coalitions & Communities

We also found that communities of practice, both formal and informal, are what allow public interest technologists to thrive. For many, being the only technologist in an organization is isolating. Peer networks, mentorship, convenings, and cross-sector collaborations create the conditions for learning, solidarity, and growth. Positive examples already exist, from Ford Foundation’s The Table, to grassroots working groups such as the Public Interest Technology Group, to informal networks like the Slack community hosted by Simply Secure. These spaces should be expanded and supported with intention, not left to individual initiative.

Together, professionalization and community building form the foundation for PIT’s future. The practitioners we spoke with are already charting the path. Our responsibility, as researchers, leaders, and funders, is to match their creativity and commitment with structures that make their work legible, sustainable, and enduring.

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