Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy announced its fifth cohort of Tech & Public Policy (TPP) fellows, who aim to bring professional experience in the tech sector to the Capitol Campus, on Jan. 20.
The fellows include Megan Shahi, the director of technology policy at the Center for American Progress, a think tank; Kris Rose (GRD ’18), who currently leads artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives at IBM and formerly worked at Meta and the Central Intelligence Agency; and Sydney Saubestre, who works at the think tank New America’s Open Technology Institute on issues surrounding data and privacy. The spring cohort, through a series of events and discussion groups featuring teams of student leaders, will focus their work on social media, artificial intelligence and digital governance, according to TPP program director Michael Bailey. 
The McCourt School of Public Policy’s spring cohort of Tech & Public Policy fellows will include Megan Shahi, Kris Rose, and Sydney Saubestre, Georgetown University announced on Jan. 20. (Georgetown University)
Bailey, who joined the TPP program as director Jan. 1, said the fellowship is an opportunity for Georgetown students to engage in meaningful conversations about technology and public policy.
“One of the goals of the tech and public policy programs is for us to be a hub for high-end experts, and for students and others to really engage in the hard questions about how tech and public policy intersect,” Bailey told The Hoya. “The fellowship is one of our flagship programs.”
Bailey said the fellows support the McCourt school’s efforts to keep up with current policy challenges, such as the rise of AI.
“They are a really important part of our efforts to connect to ‘real policy world,’ which, by the way, is moving so fast,” Bailey said. “We have a lot of faculty who do these kinds of things, but you’ve got to be on the ground to keep up.”
Shahi, who will lead the discussion group “Designing Values-Based Regulation: Navigating Trade-Offs in Tech Policy,” said she was interested in the TPP program because it emphasizes practical learning.
“I was drawn to the program because it sits right at the intersection of theory and practice,” Shahi wrote to The Hoya. “Students often know the issues well, but what’s harder to learn is how to navigate competing values when there’s no perfect answer.”
Rose said his discussion group, “Developing a Holistic AI Governance Ecosystem,” will focus on regulating emerging technologies in both the private and public sectors.
“A lot of what I’ll be focusing on is, how are we creating the systems of governance? And determining who makes what decisions, because these platforms are unprecedented in their impact on society and their scale across different boundaries and borders, and not one government can necessarily control them,” Rose told The Hoya. “What does a new governance ecosystem look like to manage these technologies?”
Rose, who received his master’s degree in public policy from McCourt, said he wanted to become a fellow to support current students.
“What excites me the most, and what I hope to bring back through the fellowship, is hopefully support to the student body, because I felt so supported as a student when I was studying and loved the access to policy practitioners,” Rose said.
Shahi said she hopes to help students gain confidence in making policy decisions, a skill they can bring into their careers.
“Tech policy is full of gray areas, and it’s easy to feel like there has to be a ‘right’ answer or that otherwise it’s not worth advocating for, which is definitely not the case,” Shahi wrote. “I also hope that McCourt students learn how to develop frameworks they can carry into their careers, offering ways of thinking through problems when values collide and the stakes are real and pressing, whether in tech policy or elsewhere.”
Bailey said universities such as Georgetown play an important role in shaping ongoing conversations about tech and public policy.
“We’re not going to be perfectly objective or anything, but we don’t have financial incentives on one thing or the other for any answer to any given question,” Bailey said. “We can worry about the truth and we may not achieve it, I don’t think that we have some exclusive access to it, but our incentives are for us to be a really good place to have some really good conversations.”
Rose said he is excited to learn from the other fellows, as well as students, in Spring 2026.
“I’m super excited to learn from the other fellows,” Rose said. “We might not necessarily always be doing events on the same day and we might be in and out, but I think that one of the really cool things about the fellowship is that it’s a cohort model, and so Georgetown is not only bringing together fellows to support the students, but the fellows themselves can learn from one another.”
