April Feng, CEO, Ameelio, United States

1. How do you use technology/policy to improve citizens’ lives? Tell us about your role or organisation.

As the CEO of Ameelio, I spend my days building and deploying technology for the 2.1M Americans behind bars.

I am so proud of the work we do. We are a team of engineers, designers, former government workers, and policy enthusiasts, and we build virtual solutions so that the incarcerated can communicate with their loved ones, access educational, vocational, legal and medical resources, and start building future opportunities while incarcerated. We build technologies for them so they could serve time meaningfully.

In our century, civil and political participation has been made available, through digital means, to populations previously ignored. I see our work at Ameelio as creating and sustaining digital citizenship for the incarcerated people, even before they are able to participate physically.

To subscribe to the GovInsider bulletin click here.

2. What was the most impactful project you worked on this year?

Growing Ameelio, discovering more and more systemic failures in the correctional system, and fixing them one by one!

Ameelio had an excellent year in 2024. In one year, we expanded our footprint from two to six states and tripled the number of people we serve. The scale gave us a much higher vantage point and more accurate understanding of the needs facing incarcerated individuals.

One discovery was that most prisons and jails lack basic internet infrastructure for people under custody, resulting in low-quality access to any online resources and creating a bottleneck for any new technology to function properly. The huge discrepancy in digital literacy inside and outside means that incarcerated people are essentially living in a time capsule, extremely ill-prepared for an outside world that’s increasingly digitized.  

Based on this understanding, I personally wrote to every state’s broadband team to advocate for incarcerated individuals to be included in the implementation of the historic bipartisan infrastructure law (IIJA) in the U.S. As a direct result of our work, 28 states designated correctional facilities as “community anchor institutions”, alongside schools, libraries and medical centers. This designation allows the facilities to access billions of federal funding to improve network deficiencies behind the walls. Most importantly, this means that digital equity can finally reach the prison cells, and that the 95% of incarcerated population that will come home one day will no longer feel alienated in an increasingly digitized world and take advantage of all it has to offer.

3. What was one unexpected learning from 2024?

As an immigrant in the U.S., I have been exclusively using virtual communication to stay in touch with my families. This November, after 5 years of separation, I was finally able to travel back home and see my parents face to face, and it was immediately apparent how much we have lost in the past 1,800 days. Seeing how my parents walk is so much more telling than hearing them talk about old age; Smelling the familiar scent of food is more comforting than any words of affection. Virtual communication still has a long way to go before it can replace in-person ones.

Reflecting on this experience, I realized that Ameelio’s work cannot stop at the output level. We can count how many minutes a resident was able to see their loved ones via video calls and rejoice at the increased communication, but we also need to look at our impact beyond that. The work of connecting humans is not complete till they can meet in person, aka when they are released. We should communicate transparently, internally and externally, about how or if increased communication reduces length of stay and recidivism.

4. What’s a tool or technique you’re excited to explore in 2025?

Human-centered product research and development is something that we are excited to roll out on a bigger scale in 2025.

 A key area of uncertainty for us centers around the question “How do our incarcerated users experience our product?” It’s a very difficult question to answer. First, it takes much trust between a service provider and a correctional facility to enable direct resident feedback. Further, when feedback is provided, they are oftentimes not yet actionable, due to imprecise accounts of events or the inability to follow up.

Thankfully, the conditions are changing. As we grow bigger and our name representing trustworthiness and quality, human-centered research and user guidance become a real possibility in 2025. I am so excited to discover new insights from first-hand accounts and incorporate them into product improvements.

To subscribe to the GovInsider bulletin click here.

5. Everybody’s talking about AI today – give us your hot take on AI and what it means for the public sector.

Here’s my very hot take, and my apologies if it doesn’t make sense: The difference between AI and human is that the former does not fear randomness, while the latter is oftentimes biologically bound to do so.

In my experience, as humans, the concept of sheer randomness inspires strong emotions: It’s hard for us to accept that our existence is random, our purpose is random, the result of our work can be random… We try to attach meaning, patterns, and logic to things, so we can “know” something.

To AI, however, there’s no emotion associated with concepts like this. AI will not freak out if we say: “Your existence is random and your life has no inherent meaning.” It will not be disappointed if no significant pattern is found upon analyzing all the data humans ever produced - that history has no direction. It is perfectly okay with existence without pattern.

It’s a blessing and a curse. So many of our greatest achievements as a species resulted from the fact that we care, we want to matter, and we fear that our time on earth will pass by without significance or meaning. While AI might be more fair in its deliberation of a single issue, it simply does not give a damn.

What this means for the public sector is something I am still thinking about… At minimum, I think this means two things: (1) AI’s role in the public sector should lean towards information-gathering and service-provision. It should not be decision making. (2) We are in the era where data-driven and evidence-based policymaking is the norm, but there might be times where the most logical thing is not the right thing to do. Navigating logic informed by knowledge - supercharged by AI - and the human instinct will be a beautiful, delicate, and truly critical dance for policymakers to engage in.

6. What are your priorities for 2025?

Professionally, I want to take Ameelio to the next level! This means truly realizing our core mission and establishing stability so we can keep at it!

Personally, I have four priorities for myself, which honestly haven’t changed that much over the past decade (is that normal?): To discover beauty in everyday life, and to live beautifully; Save some time for thinking every day; Spent time with people whom I love and who love me; To be able to travel, to wonder, and to have fun with this world and the humans in it.

7. What advice do you have for public sector innovators?

Learn to have fun! Before I joined Ameelio, I used to work in government. My husband and I used to think that public servants have the largest amount of patience. Since I started in Ameelio, I am convinced that those who provide services to public servants need to have even greater patience!

Public sector innovation is humbling work, as success comes slowly and rarely. A sense of humor is truly needed for the work to be sustainable. Otherwise, you will burn out or become cynical! 

8. Who inspires you today? 

My grandmother inspires me today and every single day! I had the great fortune to observe not only how she lived, but also how she died, from which I formed one of my most enduring beliefs, that a life lived in service is not a sacrifice, but an honor. Cheers to her.