Dave Guarino is a software engineer and public policy analyst. As a Director at Code for America, he was the founding engineer of GetCalFresh, a digital service designed to radically overhaul how low-income Californians access food assistance benefits. The work sought to minimize the burden placed on users and offer a digital safety net with dignity as its core value. Dave and the team scaled GetCalFresh from an R&D project in 2014 to serving over 1 million users in 2019.

Ask Dave about:

• Building modern layers on top of legacy systems
• Rapid prototype delivery to test high-risk assumptions
• Service design for lower-income and safety net program users
• Tactics to increase user voice in policy and service development