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Ajay and Chizo spoke with Clay Garner, the Chief Innovation Officer for the City of San Jose from the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation. Clay shares how he began his career as a pop star (and Schwarzman Scholar) in China, his experience working in local government during a pandemic, why he sees libraries as the most trustworthy public institutions and his advice for early-career professionals interested in local government.
Episode credits: Hosted and edited by Ajay and Chizo.
Cover art created by modifying Abstract Shapes © Nathan Covert (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)
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All episodes include a transcript of the conversation for our newsletter subscribers. Please find the transcript of the interview below.
Chizo: Congratulations again, Clay, on being named the Chief Innovation Officer. I can imagine that you're in a really exciting and impactful position to lead San Jose's efforts to reimagine how it serves residents using tech and design. But could you start by telling us how you became a pop sensation in China and Taiwan?
Clay Garner: Of course! The short version is, I used to be much cooler than I am now, you know, when I was in high school, I started making Chinese language music videos, and they ended up going really viral in Asia. You know, with that I had the opportunity to be on a lot of TV programs in both China and Taiwan, and it really changed my life and my perspective on the world. Kind of grew up at the nexus of media, and internet culture between the US and Asia and it still informs how I see things today. You know, in my role as Chief Innovation Officer in San Jose, I like to blend that cross-cultural, artistic thinking with public service. And I think there's so much we can learn from other places, you know, other ways of thinking and doing beyond just the United States.
Ajay: Clay, so both of our stories actually have a couple of interesting parallels. The first one, obviously, is that when you created Chinese music videos in high school, that was also something that I did when I was in high school, I took four years of Mandarin as well. And our senior project was to make a music video in Mandarin. And our group did a, a parody of Thrift Shop by Macklemore. And it's my most viral video on youtube today, although it only has 1.7 thousand views. So it didn't get me into being a Chinese pop star. But there's still a little bit of a parallel here. But the other thing that we have in common is that we both also worked at a FAANG company. And I was actually really curious, expanding on that point, could you share about how you made your transition from big tech to local government, as someone who also worked at Facebook, although it was an internship, I remember feeling just how like Facebook, which is very big and profit-driven, and you know, my work was very siloed as an engineer, I didn't really feel like I was working on impactful projects, I didn't feel like that my team was supporting me and it's something that I've gone in-depth a lot on the podcast in general. And it's something that I don't feel in like government tech, like civic tech today. But that experience combined with doing Coding It Forward helped me realize that I wanted the work that I did, as a software engineer to directly serve the public. Clay, I would love it, if you could walk us through your decision to leave Google and pursue a career in public service.
Clay Garner: I'll have to check out your music video because now I'm just really curious. But if you had asked me in college, I'd be interested in joining a local government, I probably would have just laughed, you know. I've watched Parks and Rec and the idea of sitting through these boring kind of endless community meetings just never really seemed appealing. But I was in grad school in China, as a Schwartzman scholar, I had a really brief but unique opportunity to shadow local government leaders there. And they're working on really hard problems like poverty alleviation with basically no resources. You know, they're out there, engaging directly with the families, trying to help them with, you know, business plans for an orchard, for example, to get them services. And it was all just really contingent upon their individual efforts. And it lit something in the back of my mind, like this could be a line of work that is fulfilling, in a value sense, but also intellectually stimulating. And so having all of this in my mind, I started working at Google as an APM, or an Associate Product Marketing Manager. And, you know, it's a really nice place to work, they have all the benefits and resources you could possibly imagine. And you've got brilliant people working on everything. But there was just something kind of probably, like you feel, you know, just not there. And I felt like, I'm not contributing anything to this place. And maybe it's a bit of hubris to think that, you know, I would be able to contribute to like the most successful company ever. But I still couldn't help thinking, if I didn't show up, they're gonna be just fine. And that's not the type of career that I personally wanted to have. And so one day, you know, after work, I'm writing the Caltrain, which is our local commuter rail in the Bay Area. And I start reading one of those free pamphlets that they have near the door on the train. And it's talking about the capital improvements for this railroad, the Joint Powers agency between, you know, all the counties that manage this train, and how what they're planning for electrification is going to help them meet climate goals. And I was just like, wow, this is so cool. You know, I need to go work on this, you know, I need to work in government. And so I quit Google. And my manager told me it was a really bad decision. But I found this incredible team in the San Jose Mayor's office, and I joined as a Tech Policy Analyst back in 2019. And luckily, Mayor Liccardo thought my background in C pop would be more of an asset than some kind of political liability. And, you know, I'll never forget but on the first day of my job during orientation, the city manager spoke to all the new hires, and he said something that really stuck with me. He said, You know, when we do our job well, most people they won't even notice and there'll be no recognition. And if we don't do our jobs, well, people get hurt. And I think that just really sums up public service and why I made the switch.
Ajay: Yeah, I actually had a very similar viewpoint when I was at Facebook as an intern, except it was a little more morbid in the sense that I would be sitting in my office chair, being like, you know, if I died, would anyone even notice? And it was a little more a lot more morbid than being like, hey, well, if I, you know, if I'm not at Google, then this company is still going to succeed without me. Expanding on your second point a little bit, I thought your way of finding out about your job was very interesting. Basically, being on the Caltrain as a lover of transportation myself, I think it was a really cool connect to looking at transportation and then segueing that into government. But I'm actually curious, how did you find out about the Office of Innovation itself?
Clay Garner: So as I'm sure many people who are looking for jobs and local government know, it's really difficult to find them, because they're not always on LinkedIn, for example. And if you don't have, you know, a network of people, in those types of jobs, it just is really daunting. But I was browsing the city of San Jose's job website. And it's almost like so fortuitous, I just came across this role. And I happened to have all of the qualifications and skills that I thought maybe I might have, you know, I submitted my cover letter. And you know, a lot of government jobs require these really, time consuming applications. But I said, you know what, this looks really interesting. And I'm going to do it. And luckily, I got an interview. And there were like, four or five different interviews, you know, and it was drawn out over multiple weeks, and finally had an interview with Mayor Liccardo. And of course, he asked the same question about C pop. And then I had this opportunity.
Chizo: I think the picture that you drew about local government being synonymous with your Parks and Recs visualization, like makes a lot of sense. And I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that with that, because you kind of also illustrate like, what it was like entering local government, like right before the pandemic, and then you know, working through the pandemic, clearly, like you're now even in my county, like so many municipalities across the country, like, really, we're making this drastic shift to digital service delivery and digital outreach. I mean, we think about like public hearings on Zoom to even alerting the public about COVID restrictions or distributing laptops for high school students to actually like ease the digital divide that maybe wasn't as transparent before. I'd really love to kind of understand, like, how COVID even shifted the purpose or the focus of your work?
Clay Garner: Yeah, it's a great question. And you know, it's funny, because everyone signs a disaster worker pledge, when you assume a local or state government job, but you never think like the big ones going to happen when you're in office. San Jose is already one of the most thinly staffed big city halls in America. So the pandemic really became all hands on deck for us. And I just remember waking up every day, back in like March 2020. And having so much adrenaline to just grind, I work from like, 6am, to 11pm, mostly because I was so anxious and nervous, and just trying to channel this, like nervous energy into something productive. You know, as a young person, there's just so much opportunity to take on leadership and responsibility because we're building and scaling things, which we never even did before as a city, you know, like food distribution, we distributed like a few 100 million free meals. And you know, I personally launched a brand new digital platform called Silicon Valley strong in less than 48 hours, which is like lightspeed for government. And that piece was really addicting. And, you know, I'd go out with some of the teams to support the food distribution lines, and you'd see the families in their cars, just waiting for food. And this is, like a basic, corny, the people are just trying to get met, you know, that I got to see like the full flex of the public sector in crisis. I think that was pretty priceless.
Chizo: Yeah, I think that's really telling to even how, you know, folks in local government, you know, really were another form of what we really can, because society really became aware of us frontline workers to and actually trying to, like immediately directly serve, folks. So thank you for sharing that. With that, let's take a step back and kind of help our listeners understand really what the Office of Innovation is, at least from my understanding innovation offices are usually situated in the Mayor's Office, which may come with different powers and influences that may be a typical department say, a Department of Public Works or Transportation may not have but that you do work collaboratively like across different departments and agencies. So could you really define for us like, what is the Office of Innovation? And what are the benefits of being housed in the mayor's office?
Clay Garner: My team's goal is to leverage the ingenuity of Silicon Valley where we have the sort of privilege of being located as a city to improve standards and livelihoods, you know, our access to opportunities and city experience overall. So we advise the mayor on where we think things are going from attacking innovation standpoint, and how those developments might be useful to solving some of our challenges. And we also help departments address their core issues by building products, leveraging outside STEM talent. You know, just talking through creative approaches to problems, I think being housed in the mayor's office is really great because we get a bird's eye view of everything going on in the city and all the issues facing our residents. What that does is it helps us to work across policy areas to address challenges, which are pretty interdisciplinary in nature, like the digital divide or pedestrian safety, you know, you've aspects of public safety, transit, transportation, you know, backed up into something like that. And so I think that's really unique opportunity for being in the mayor's office.
Chizo: Listen, starting as Deputy Chief Innovation Officer, could you also share some product or specific products or projects that you're really proud of? Definitely ones that were really required working across different agencies.
Clay Garner: So we launched probably the first city engagement with a public blockchain based IoT network. You know, it's been really interesting, because we're using all the crypto that's generated in this pilot to pay for low income households internet plans, we're trying to understand you know, how this type of IoT network can be useful for some of the city problems that we're facing, like air quality monitoring, wildfire monitoring. So I think that's been really boundary pushing. You know, it's, I think it's uncomfortable for cities to start engaging with Blockchain or web three technologies. So if anything, it's just been a really interesting experience, navigating that. And I also say that passing the first citywide digital privacy, privacy policy was really rewarding. We're starting to see that operationalized now and how our city evaluates and deploys new technologies. And we recently hired our first digital privacy officer to do that work. There's just a lot to build in the privacy space. And I think with the technologies, we're seeing just more and more of this work that has to be done.
Chizo: I remember reading your interview with Cities Today, you mentioned that your top priorities for this term were on the realm of digital inclusion, accessibility, and public safety. Could you touch on like, why those are specifically your top priorities and maybe any projects or future opportunities that you've worked with or exploring?
Clay Garner: Absolutely, you know, for digital inclusion, that's just the end state that I'm working towards. For San Jose, we can't afford to have people living in the middle of Silicon Valley, who are disconnected from the internet, because it's, it's just absurd. That's the baseline. But you know, I'm also thinking, how do we layer things like digital literacy skills, economic opportunities, access to digital health, on top of all of that, just this year, we're looking to connect more than 300,000 people to free community Wi Fi. So a lot happening, digital inclusion, I think that's kind of just the baseline need. And building on that, you know, it's really accessibility, which means to build for all people like 100%. And to do that, we need to figure out how to get different stakeholders to the table from the outset of projects and service design, so people from the disability community, people who don't speak English, and that will help us ensure that our services are useful across a spectrum of lived realities in a city that's as diverse as San Jose is public safety is also really important. You know, how do we reverse, for example, the horrible trend in collisions between pedestrians and vehicles? You know, how do we leverage new types of tools, like LIDAR? Or how do we gamify safer driving to drive those numbers down? And then thinking about, you know, emergency response, like there's so many opportunities for 911 tools to be leveraged by first responders so that they actually know what they're up against before they even arrived at the scene of an emergency. You know, I think there's a lot of opportunity to improve our response. But at the same time, you know, there's just a lot of new tech in public safety that has privacy risks. And so how do we ensure that those risks are mitigated? And we have transparency about the type of tools that we're leveraging,
Chizo: Because definitely trying to think about, yes, how can we bring new tech in to be able to advance certain policy priorities? But at the same time, again, how can we balance those against ethics and privacy for folks that might be end users? I think you made a really a lot of really great points. Could you actually touch on like, really how important budget prioritization is for innovation offices in continuing and maintaining some of the work that you mentioned, long term? How does like a city of San Jose really, or your office specifically, I think about, you know, moving this forward, beyond maybe the mayor's term or throughout?
Clay Garner: It's a great question. And honestly, sustainability is one of the most important things for our initiatives and thinking about how do we actually ensure that beyond the mayor's term, we're lucky that again, we work with the mayor, so we try to inform how the city prioritizes different technology investments through budget messages through the city council, we work with outside philanthropy groups, like the Knight Foundation and Bloomberg, to help support some of the initiatives where we just don't have funding in the city. But we need to explore some opportunity or just take advantage of something that's really fast and just turn it around. I think we're really creative when it comes to funding and even you know, like the project with helium in our crypto, you know, how do we find new sources of revenue as a city so that we're not just relying on like our budget per se, but thinking about things in a business model way, I think that's another opportunity for us.
Ajay: Clay I want to expand a little bit on libraries and education. So a couple months ago, I read this really fascinating book recommended to me by a co worker about libraries called, ironically, The Library Book by Susan Orlean, who concatenates a specific topic about the burning of the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library in the 1980s with a more general in depth analysis on how libraries have evolved to better serve the needs of 21st century communities. And this ranges from 3D printing maker spaces like in my hometown library of Elmhurst, Illinois, holding community events for middle school and high school students, loaning out musical scores to local orchestras who cannot afford to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars per show, and running Social Services events at the Los Angeles Public Library's main branch. Clay, I know this is something you touched on a little bit in your interview with govtech.com. But I'm curious, how does the Chief Innovation Officer role enable libraries and the city's education system to innovate as the needs of the community continue to evolve?
Clay Garner: I just love this question. Because I absolutely love libraries, you know, a bit biased, but I'll say that our San Jose Public Library system is the best in America. They consistently have the highest resident trust of any government institution at the local level. And I'm sure that's probably replicated across most of United States. So it makes sense that people come to libraries for help cluding people who are undocumented or fear, engaging with governments and feel unsafe going elsewhere, you know, our library actually leads the city's digital equity work. So it provides free hotspots and Wi Fi, all kinds of courses, digital literacy training, you know, to your point, libraries are really becoming like a default social service delivery space in this country. Everything we do from like a tech perspective, libraries definitely top of mind as a delivery mechanism.
Ajay: Yeah, I honestly agree. There's just so many really cool things that libraries have to offer. Clay, I want to actually take a little bit of a segue from our past questions about some of the problems that you've been solving as Chief Innovation Officer of San Jose, to talk about nurturing the next generation of public servants. It's a topic that we've kind of explored a lot on our podcast. Our backstory, when Evan and I first created the podcast specifically was that we wanted a resource that we would have wished we had a couple years earlier, when we were undergraduate students studying computer science and kind of wondering where we want them to go with our careers that wasn't just looking at FAANG companies. As one of the youngest innovation officers in the country in the ninth largest city in the United States, how do you hope to inspire and attract young people to pursue a career in public service? What is the city of San Jose currently doing to attract early and mid career technologists?
Clay Garner: So I will say that we've got no fancy water, or snacks at the city, you know, I drink out of a tap in the bathroom on the seventh floor of City Hall, which is probably TMI, but it's just to illustrate that, you know, our benefits don't compare with tech companies, certainly not FAANG. That being said, if you want to wake up and work on some of the most interesting, perplexing, meaningful projects out there, we've got them in bulk. And we've got opportunities, like the ones I've had, personally to get incredible levels of responsibility early in your career, learning how to manage people, teams, designing projects and services, from soup to nuts, and really participating in everything from, you know, the high level strategy to the actual delivery of public goods, you know, literally being out on the street talking to people, you know, when I wake up, I feel super happy. And in my heart that I get to do this, you know, it's stressful at times to read about your work in the news. And I would say that, you know, it's a special experience that you just can't find anywhere else. We've got roles across departments for early and young, sort of mid middle career people, I guess you could call them to join our civil service, Mayor's office, other type of positions. There's an amazing position out right now, just for a little plug for someone to be our equity through data lead for the city, so that someone who can help design and execute a plan to drive our decision making in a way that's more data driven around equity. And so that I think would be an amazing opportunity for someone that's mid career or earlier career who's got a passion for data. And we also work with fabulous organizations like coding forward, as you know, our local high schools, universities like SJSU to get STEM students exposed to public sector problems.
Ajay: Yeah, that's awesome. And speaking as a person who has a very significant data background, prior to my current job, which is a software engineer, it's really really cool to see cities investing more and more in using data to drive equitable decisions. I think it's truly admirable and it's a really, really exciting position. Expanding a little bit on Coding It Ford specifically since Chizo and I are both Coding It Forward alums: We did notice that San Jose was one of the first host cities for Coding It Forward's Civic Innovation Corps. Clay talk to us a bit about how you really try to provide an impactful but really informative summer for folks serving in government for the first time.
Clay Garner: So Coding It Forward was just an amazing program to work with. You know, and I'm not getting paid to say that it's honestly true. The fellows that we brought on, they actually helped us decide what we should even work on. And I think that's pretty unique for an internship to allow for that kind of input. And between the police transparency portal that one team worked on, and the data equity work stream, you know, the fellows really able to interact directly with a range of city employees, from cops to parks and recreation supervisors, to the mayor, you know, I think the that they're able to use their skills to build things that we couldn't have built without them. And I think that's, like the hallmark of a great internship. So overall, as a host, I would say like 10, out of 10 experience.
Ajay: Yeah, actually seems like an awesome internship experience that is impactful, not just for y'all, but also for the people working on, you know, these problems as well. I know, like, especially speaking from a FAANG perspective, or from one of my in tech internships at JPMorgan, you know, a lot of the projects that interns got to work on weren't really impactful. And I, I know from experience that like that code just kind of gets like disheveled at the end of the summer, it's not really impactful to the company's bottom line. So being able to see that interns and undergraduate students can come and make an impact in government, at a local level is just a really exciting thing to hear. And you kind of expanded this question a little bit, a couple questions ago, Clay, about your team growing. And obviously, you did answer that with the data equity role that is opening up in the city of San Jose government. But for a role like this, and I guess for other potential roles that would be opening up down the line? What type of skills and qualities do you look for? How are you making transitioning into local government accessible to members of the San Jose community and those with lived experiences affected by government systems?
Clay Garner: You know, first, to use a classic, you've got to thrive in ambiguity, which in a lot of corporate environments, I think that's really overused and kind of cliche. But in this role, I literally don't have all the answers, you know, it's a tiny team, with a tiny budget, and I need everyone on my staff to be really independent, full scope operator, come in and expect to do things that you and I as well both don't know how to do. You know, humility is also really important people who can bring an empathetic approach to a range of experiences, environments and behaviors, because at the end of the day, we serve 1 million people in in one of the most diverse cities in America. If you got foreign language skills, or you grew up in circumstances that give you a particular insight in government, you know, where it's failed, where it's been helpful. That's also a huge plus for us. And you know, more than 57% of the residents in San Jose speak a language other than English at home. So that's really important facts for us to always have in the back of our minds. And I think finally, you've got to be really curious about technology. I don't care if you call that well, you know, I don't really code that well, a try. Or even if you have an engineering background, but I think at a minimum, you need to be curious about how what's technologically possible might be leveraged for public impact in San Jose.
Chizo: With that, I'd like to also your take on any advice that you have for, you know, people who are wanting to work in local government,
Clay Garner: I would say Be patient, you know, it can feel like a rat race out there. Social media certainly doesn't help, at least not for me. When I was looking for a job in gov, I got rejected left and right, and straight up ghosted, you know, when I thought interviews are going well. And it's, as I kind of said earlier, many weeks of interviews to get this gig in the mayor's office. So that's A. you know, just be patient. And secondly, you can follow city or county meetings, they're all on YouTube, for the most part. And they're broadcasted like multiple times a week, so you can learn who works on what, you know, what are the challenges that are interesting for your city or your town in your county. And most of the time, staffs' email is even on the slide so you can reach out to them. And I find most people in public sector are pretty open to coffee chats, and that kind of thing. You know, there are lots of local governments, thousands of them, we all live into the purview of local governments. Some of you may not have even heard of like, transit agencies or counties. You know, one descriptor that I love is LA County is basically a country, it's got 10 million people living in it. And it's not even really the city. So just think about that. And then finally, I'd say, you got fellowship programs like Coding It Forward, which are a great way to get your toes wet. But going all in full time was a really, really different experience. People will treat you differently, kind of like one of their own. And I think you get to learn what it's like to be in the thick of it for something like a pandemic.
Chizo: Now would that, really I'd like to hand you off our signature and final question that we ask all our guests who come on the pod, what does thinking civic mean to you?
Clay Garner: Thinking Civic, you know, it's being awoken to this periphery of streetlights, you know, signs, community centers, fire stations, what have you, you know. It's being awoken to this like full environment around us which determines all of our collective feats, and thinking, how do we make it better?
clay garner: chief innovation officer for the city of san jose