Four changemakers in public interest technology named 2025 Mimi and Peter E. Haas Distinguished Visitors

The Haas Center for Public Service is delighted to introduce the four local entrepreneurs making waves in public interest technology that have been named as the 2025 Mimi and Peter E. Haas Distinguished Visitors.
This year’s Distinguished Visitors are Alexandra Bernadotte, Jaime-Alexis Fowler, Josh Nesbit, and Amanda Renteria. The four will kick off their Stanford residency in February followed by a panel event on March 5, Innovation for All: Empowering Communities through Tech, in which they will discuss how emerging technologies can be leveraged to build up our communities and support underserved members of our society. During the spring quarter, they will co-teach the Cardinal Course Challenging the Status Quo: Social Entrepreneurs, Democracy, Development and Justice with Stanford lecturer Kathleen Kelly Janus. During their time on campus, they will also meet with students, faculty and community leaders individually.
The Distinguished Visitors program invites to campus influential individuals whose lives and careers have been dedicated to creating positive social impact and who have distinguished themselves in one or more forms of public service. The program has been combined with key elements from Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford (SEERS), which engages leaders of organizations taking groundbreaking approaches to advancing social, economic, and political change. Previous visitors have included climate-focused entrepreneurs, physicians, educators, journalists, organizers, artists, and politicians.
Josh’s work blends together frontier technology, community care, and relational organizing. Inspired by door-to-door care in rural Malawi, Josh co-founded Medic, a nonprofit that built open-source software to support community health workers' care. Under his leadership as CEO, Medic has grown from a small pilot to a global organization, enabling 165,000 health workers to care for millions of families across Africa and Asia. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and economic conditions in the United States, he helped organize mutual aid networks with doulas and worker-owned platform cooperatives. In his current role as technologist in residence at Emerson Collective, Nesbit is exploring how AI and other emerging technologies can help weave a stronger social fabric.
“I am eager to reconnect with the magic on Stanford's campus,” said Nesbit. “It's a community of people who are deeply tapped into possibilities, and I’m excited to collaborate with students and faculty. There is a wonderful spiritual entanglement that happens when collaborating on challenging, creative, and meaningful work.”
“I keep returning to the power of care and courage of caregivers.” Nesbit added. “There’s no more powerful force for worldbuilding—or better use of our technology.”
Alex Bernadotte’s work focuses on supporting disadvantaged communities. She is the founder and CEO of Beyond 12, a nonprofit that integrates personalized coaching with artificial intelligence to increase the number of historically underserved students who graduate from college and translate their degrees into meaningful employment and choice-filled lives. Her extensive background in education includes experience serving as executive director of The Princeton Review’s Silicon Valley office, executive director of Foundation for a College Education, co-founder and vice president of marketing at educational travel company Explorical, and operations manager at the World Health Organization.
“I was inspired to create Beyond 12 because of my own experiences as a first-generation college graduate,” said Bernadotte. “Like many first-generation students, I struggled during my first year. Attending college changed my worldview. I became a better writer and critical thinker and found my passion for social justice. The challenges I faced during my years at Dartmouth planted the seed for what I wanted to do professionally: build a movement to ensure other first-generation students wouldn’t struggle as I had.”
Beyond 12 is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, and has established a goal of scaling up to serve one million students annually by 2030. “This is the right moment to pause, reflect, and consider the next steps for our organization and the next chapter of my journey as a social change leader,” said Bernadotte.
Jaime-Alexis Fowler is motivated by the ways that emerging technologies can be leveraged to build a better society with healthy, equitable workplaces where people thrive. She is the founder and executive director of Empower Work, a national nonprofit that provides a crisis text line for vulnerable workers, builds skills through training, and transforms practices through data and storytelling. She has led marketing at the NGO Pathfinder International, run operations for a national post-abortion counseling nonprofit, scaled marketing at Code for America, and launched an investigative newsroom. She is driven by passion to support the 40 million workers across the country who lack the resources and support they need to thrive in their jobs and, by extension, their economic well being.
“The promise that if you simply have a good job, you'll have a path to opportunity, is broken. Work is not working for most people,” Fowler said. “At Empower Work, we're redefining the support systems around work. I get energized every day seeing the impact that we have in our direct programs like our text line and how it ladders up to policy and practice change. Using the unique combination of technology and deep human connection, we're supporting stability now so they can have mobility tomorrow.”
Empower Work was recognized by the U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, who included it as part of the U.S. Surgeon General’s Workplace Wellbeing Framework. “It was an honor to be on stage with Dr. Murthy when he announced it and to have the voices of workers we support included in the work,” said Fowler.
Amanda Renteria is the CEO of Code for America, a nonprofit organization that partners with governments and community-based organizations utilizing technology to create ‘a government by the people, for the people in the digital age.’ Code for America focuses on programs that strengthen the social safety net, increase access to tax benefits, and empower local initiatives to alleviate poverty and advance equity. Before Code for America, Amanda served as the chief of operations for the national political director during the 2016 United States Presidential campaign for Secretary Hillary Clinton, and a chief of staff in the United States Senate where she worked for nearly a decade, becoming the first Latina chief of staff in the history of the Senate.
“My passion for public service is deeply rooted in my personal story,” Renteria said. “As the proud daughter of farm workers, growing up in one of the nation's lowest-income congressional districts, I witnessed firsthand both the challenges facing underserved communities and the transformative power of effective government programs. My career path has taken me from the frontlines of policy development to the intricacies of political advocacy, each role strengthening my commitment to creating a government that works for everyone.”
Thinking about what she’d like to accomplish during her time at Stanford, Renteria added, “I'm energized by the opportunity to collaborate with Stanford students, who bring a unique perspective as digital natives navigating today's complex political and technological landscape. Their intuitive understanding of emerging technologies, combined with their experience of rapidly evolving social and political dynamics, makes them invaluable partners in reimagining how government can better serve all Americans.”
“We are excited to welcome this remarkable group of leaders, who all show the transformative potential of public interest technology at a time when it is urgently needed.” said Yi-Ching Ong, executive director of the Haas Center. “Their work illustrates the power of innovation when guided by purpose and community perspective, and we hope that many Stanford students will be inspired to imagine and pursue new ways to leverage technology to address societal challenges. We look forward to the connections and insights that will emerge from their time on campus.”
The Distinguished Visitor Lecture on March 5 is free and open to all members of the Stanford community and general public. The event will take place on the second floor of the Escondido Village Graduate Residences (EVGR) Pavilion. Attendees are welcome to meet the Distinguished Visitors at a reception downstairs following the panel discussion and Q&A session. Read more about our Distinguished Visitors, register to attend or contact the Haas Center for more information.