A Conversation with Andrew McLaughlin, Former Deputy CTO of the United States

Join the Technology Club for an in-depth conversation with Andrew McLaughlin, the former deputy CTO of the United States under President Obama and the current executive director of the Yale Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking. McLaughlin will share highlights from his career leading major technology initiatives across the U.S. and will take questions from the audience. 

By Karen Guzman

Technology companies today are looking at big challenges, and even bigger opportunities, Andrew McLaughlin told students at the Yale School of Management on January 25.

In a talk hosted by the Technology Club, McLaughlin, the executive director of the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY), discussed current “business problems in startup land.” He touched on what he called the overarching issues that are shaping the technology space today, including net neutrality, free speech, and the responsibility large platforms have to monitor their content, and the debate over blockchain and the decentralization of computing control.

McLaughlin came to Yale last summer after serving as the deputy chief technology officer under the Obama administration, and as a member of the human rights and technology and innovation committees of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Yale launched Tsai CITY, which serves as a focal point for entrepreneurship at Yale, in the fall of 2017. “We’re building a new component of the Yale ecosystem,” McLaughlin said. “We’ve got a lot of amazing programs and events going on this year, and we’re encouraging students to come by.”

Tsai CITY connects students from diverse backgrounds and disciplines to work on innovative ways to address real-world problems. The center helps facilitate partnerships to share university resources and to provide new and effective avenues for students to develop the skills crucial to building an innovative mindset. The center has a special emphasis on fostering student startups.