Denice W Ross (she/her)

Denice Ross is building a more resilient national data infrastracture, through affiliations with the National Conference on Citizenship, the Federation of American Scientists, UC Berkeley and the Urban Institute. Follow her work at EssentialData.US

Most recently, she served as the Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer and as the U.S. Chief Data Scientist, where she led the charge to use disaggregated data to drive better outcomes for all Americans.

Previously, as a Senior Fellow at the National Conference on Citizenship, she led a multidisciplinary group of stakeholders to coordinate support for a high quality census despite a pandemic and unprecedented political pressure. She also co-authored the data series "Pandemic to Prosperity," with a special focus on Southern states and their path to an equitable recovery. She was a Fellow at the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, providing startup support for the new State Chief Data Officer Network. At New America, she studied climate security and the power of networks to advance progress on big challenges.

As a Presidential Innovation Fellow in the Obama administration, she co-founded the White House Police Data Initiative to increase transparency and accountability and worked with the Department of Energy on crowdsourcing private-sector data to improve community resilience in disaster-impacted areas. Earlier, she served as Director of Enterprise Information for the City of New Orleans, where she established their open data initiative, now recognized as one of the most successful in the country.

Prior to government, Denice co-directed the Data Center, a non-profit data intermediary. After Hurricane Katrina, she collaborated with Brookings to track the city’s recovery through the definitive New Orleans Index. She brought a data-driven approach to numerous post-Katrina community planning initiatives and co-founded the first new childcare center after the storm.

Denice holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Arizona, where she was a Goldwater Scholar, and a masters degree in Energy Policy & Climate from Johns Hopkins University.