Carla Mays is a researcher, strategist, advisor and product developer in civic technology and the innovation economy. Her advising focuses on smart cities for government, startups, foundations and corporations to meet current and future needs in the digital transformation and automation.

Areas of expertise include housing/real estate, labor markets, transportation, startup and small business growth (ecosystem development of tech regions - business & economic development), closing tech divides in careers and connectivity, analysis & articulation of the innovation economy between sectors, product development of digital infrastructure, civic tech mobile and enterprise solutions.

Research Areas: AI, AR, VR, IoT, 5G implementation, blockchain, impacts of GDPR on big data especially for startups and US based corporations; cybersecurity and revenue models in civic tech, impacts of robotics & AI on labor markets

Strategic Collaboration & Partnerships: Knowledge Sharing, Business & Product Development and Funding - Capital Stacking,Relationship Development,Public/Private Partnerships (P3)

Customized Innovation workshops & labs for Business & Public Sector leaders: Technology understanding in sourcing, customization, product and service development, implementation and scaling of civic tech applications for smart cities.

Participatory & human centered design aligned lab sessions to yield the highest ROI for P3 relationships, cities and businesses resulting in amazing applications that are scalable, well designed, efficient and meet the needs of all in society. 1# focus is on revenue model for sustainability of tech projects overtime.

Specialities: Business Model Canvas, Open Innovation, Crowdsourcing, Resource Development, Customer Discovery, Product Management and Ecosystem building for products and services.

Mays has won many awards and many hackathons including 2016 Hillary Clinton Presidential Hackathon, Code for America Housing Crisis (Hack Your City with your City - San Francisco) and honorable mention at Harvard University #Hack4Congress - Finalist in Congressional Campaign Reform, Kennedy School: Ash Center for Democratic Governance & Innovation. She has been recognized by the California State Assembly and Senate. New Leaders Fellow - Sacramento, called into consult on social capital markets with the Chinese Social Entrepreneur and Impact Investor Delegation for the US State Department. Advising California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) on the latest in civic tech, digital inclusion, digital infrastructure and economic development. She has advised and coached over 600 civic and social entrepreneurs. Developed various programs with US Small Business Administration, San Francisco Office of Small Business, coworking/hackerspaces and economic development agencies.

Latest work is working with research and development associate David Capelli developing the 1st Smart Cities Economic Development fintech platform for Canada and the US supporting communities and cities.
Our goal is to aid in digital transformation by creating a financial base for cities to support digital infrastructure, deal with automation of jobs and mitigate negative externalities of the innovation economy.

Her education includes holding a Bachelors of Arts in Advocacy and Master of Public Administration (MPA) from San Francisco State University, Business & Innovation Executive Certificate from Walter Haas School of Business, Center for Executive Education at UC Berkeley. Preparing to enter a Ph.D Program in Smart Cities focused on digital transformation, sustainability, business modeling, public policy, inclusion and economic development. Mays was past Bay Area i-Corp Fellow at UC Berkeley, where she hopes to continue developing govtech by participating in tech transfer programs with SBIR & STTR funding.