TheBridge profile: Daniel Schuman

Name: Daniel Schuman
Current city: Washington, D.C.
Current job: Policy Director at Demand Progress and co-founder/director of the Congressional Data Coalition; fellow at CodeX: the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics
Past job: Sunlight Foundation, Congressional Research Service, House of Representatives

Q. Favorite coffee spot? Pitango Gelato on Capitol Hill and the Longworth Cafeteria

Q. Job advice in three works: Visit OpenGovJobs.org

Q. Describe one way how a skill you learned in a previous job helped you in your new job. Speaking in front of a live audience (and on TV) when I was the director of the Advisory Committee on Transparency taught me to enjoy speaking in public.

Q. Most underrated virtue in an employee? The ability to see around corners and anticipate what might happen next.

Q. What can Silicon Valley teach DC? That failure is okay. It’s important to innovate, to try new things, to take a risk--that just because things were done a certain way is not a good reason to keep doing it that way.

Q. What can DC teach Silicon Valley? How to access the knowledge and wisdom distributed among the libraries, think tanks, policymakers, wonks, lobbyists, and civil servants that make our government work.