When Victoria Houed applied to be a technology fellow on Capitol Hill in 2019, she had hoped to work on consumer protection. Instead, she was placed in the office of the Speaker of the House. 

“This was totally unexpected — not part of my plan at all,” she said. 

Houed’s one-year fellowship was funded by a nonprofit called TechCongress, which has placed 140 technology experts from the private and public sectors into congressional offices.

Now in its 11th year, TechCongress was founded by a former staffer, Travis Moore, who worked for a Democratic House member for six years. 

“I started TechCongress because I needed it when I was a staffer. I found myself increasingly underwater as tech issues popped up,” Moore said, adding that when complicated technology policy questions arose, experts were hard to find. “We’re talking about the first branch of government, and that expertise needs to live in-house.” 

He modeled TechCongress on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Fellows, a program that brings medical professionals to work on Capitol Hill for a year.

As Moore researched the potential for such a program in 2013 and 2014, the general response in Washington was positive, he said, but that was not the reaction of Silicon Valley. 

“Most people in the tech world were skeptical that we could find people who would give up high-paying salaries, put on a coat and tie, move to Washington and work five days a week in a congressional office,” he said. “But what we found is that, in their hearts, technologists want to work on problems at scale.”

Houed remembers working in 2020 on a bill to expand broadband to underserved areas of the United States, and she also helped author an antitrust report related to the digital marketplace. Capitol Hill didn’t really operate as she expected, she said. 

“When I showed up, I only knew what I saw in the news,” she said. “Often it was the people who were the loudest on social media. Those usually aren’t the people who have power when it comes to making certain decisions. I don’t think I realized that there’s a specific hierarchy within Congress, and it depends on whether you’re in leadership, what committee you’re on, how long you’ve been there. All these things matter more than whether or not you have good ideas.”

Before his TechCongress fellowship, Lars Erik Schonander had an existing connection to Congress, working for a nonprofit, the Foundation for American Innovation. But while briefing congressional staff on technology issues, he felt something was missing. 

“It felt odd making recommendations on how to do policy without having actually worked on Capitol Hill,” he said. 

Schonander spent a year with the Senate Small Business Committee under now-Chair Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, helping craft proposals to reauthorize the Small Business Innovation Research program, a multibillion-dollar science commercialization initiative. It allowed him to “get into the guts of what policymaking can be,” he said.

The fellowship often leads to a change in career paths, Moore said, with two-thirds of the program’s graduates shifting into public service and nonprofit organizations. Houed transitioned to the U.S. Commerce Department, working to shape AI policy and strategy. She spent 2025 helping start up a new nonprofit in Washington, the Recoding America Fund, aimed at strengthening U.S. government effectiveness and competitiveness by rebuilding state capacity. She also has written what she calls a “curriculum on policy entrepreneurship in Congress,” a tool to help other technologists understand policymaking in Washington.

“Many technologists feel like cogs in the wheels of their companies,” Moore said. “In Congress they can work on the most important problems at the highest level of decision-making, and that is really attractive to them.”

Sixteen more TechCongress fellows, the class of 2026, just completed their orientation in January and began their journey working in Congress. They have been placed in a range of offices across the Hill, both Democratic and Republican. 

Schonander said he left the TechCongress program with a greater appreciation of the people behind the laws. 

“Just to be able to think more effectively about what the pain points for members and staff are, what I got out of the fellowship is less about a skill — it’s more about a passion,” he said. 

Bradford Fitch is a former Capitol Hill staffer, former CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation and author of “Citizen’s Handbook for Influencing Elected Officials.”