Starting with a stint living in Montana working for Project Vote Smart, James has spent his career working in Civic Tech. He then worked at Sunlight Foundation, leading their state & local team as well as serving as Director of Sunlight Labs. While at Sunlight he launched the Open States project, which curates a freely available repository of state legislative information across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. James served as the lead of the Open States project for 13 years, earning the project funding from diverse sources such as the National Science Foundation Convergence Accelerator program, Reynolds Journalism Institute, and a variety of commercial sources.
James has also worked at PBS as a Director of Technology, as Principal Engineer of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, and most recently as Director of Public Data at Civic Eagle.
