DJ Patil

Investor, entrepreneur, public policy, former U.S Chief Data Scientist

San Francisco Bay Area

About

DJ Patil is an entrepreneur, investor, scientist, and leader in public policy. He has held senior roles in industry, academia, and government and his work has been featured in two Michael Lewis books. Notable early stage investments include Figma, Confluent, Ola in India, Monte Carlo, Chronosphere, Sumologic, RelateIQ, and Nixtla. He is a board member for Devoted Health where he was a member of the founding team and CTO with the mission to build a health care system that takes care of every member like they were family. Previously he led the product teams at RelateIQ which was acquired by Salesforce, and was founding board member for Crisis Text Line which works to use new technologies to provide on demand mental and crisis support. At LinkedIn he was Chief Scientist, Chief Security Officer and led the data efforts which included recommendation systems like People You May Know, Who Viewed My Profile, and Jobs You May Like; new technologies like Kafka; co-coining the term Data Scientist. Dr. Patil public policy work includes being appointed by President Obama to be the first U.S. Chief Data Scientist where his efforts led to the establishment of nearly 40 Chief Data Officer roles across the Federal government. Establishing new health care programs including the Precision Medicine Initiative (now the NIH All of Us program) and the Cancer Moonshot, new criminal justice reforms including the Data-Driven Justice and Police Data Initiatives that cover more than 94 million Americans, as well as leading the national data efforts. He also has been active in national security and for his efforts was awarded by Secretary Carter the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service which is the highest honor the department bestows on a civilian. As a member of the faculty at the University of Maryland, his research focused on nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory and he helped start a major research initiative on numerical weather prediction. As an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow for the Department of Defense, Dr. Patil directed new efforts to leverage social network analysis and the melding of computational and social sciences to anticipate emerging threats to the US. He has also co-chaired a major review of US efforts to prevent bioweapons proliferation in Central Asia and co-founded the Iraqi Virtual Science Library (IVSL). And if you’ve read this far, he barely graduated from high school because of his math grades, but lucked out because of his local community college.

Experience

  • Devoted Health (8 yrs 11 mos)
    • Board Member
      Mar 2021 - Present · 5 yrs 5 mos

    • Chief Technology Officer
      Sep 2017 - Mar 2021 · 3 yrs 7 mos

      We're on a mission to build a health plan that takes care of *every* member like they were a member of our family. We do that through great technology, data, design, and most of all love. Check us out at Devoted.com

  • General Partner at GreatPoint Ventures
    Jan 2023 - May 2026 · 3 yrs 5 mos

    Focused on building companies in healthcare, enterprise technologies, and national security. Previous investments include Figma, Confluent, Ola in India, Monte Carlo, Chronosphere, Sumologic, Peoplehood, RelateIQ, and Rebellion Defense.

  • Senior Fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center
    Apr 2018 - Aug 2023 · 5 yrs 5 mos

    Senior Fellow for Technology and Public Purpose Project Senior Fellow for Cybersecurity Project

  • Senior Staff and CTO at Biden-Harris Transition Team
    Aug 2020 - Jan 2021 · 6 mos

    Responsible for Technology Strategy & Delivery planning and policies, agency review teams, and appointments.

  • Founding Board Member at Crisis Text Line
    2012 - Dec 2020 · 9 yrs

    Founding board member from 2012 - Feb 2015 and then from Aug 2017 - current. Helping save lives through technology. Couldn't ask to work with a more passionate and dedicated crew. It's an honor.