Mjumbe Poe

Mjumbe Poe is a lecturer in the MUSA program, where he teaches students to build scalable systems to help people make decisions with geospatial data.

Mjumbe uses technology to build the capacity of individuals and communities to shape their cities, their neighborhoods, and their own lives. He has been developing civic technology since 2010. Under the banner of his consulting firm, Poe Public, he has consulted with cities such as Cambridge, MA and New York, NY on technology to support their participatory budgeting processes. Additionally, he serves as co-founder and CTO of Stepwise, a company dedicated to leveraging open data to help people make smarter, more impactful investments in the built environment. Prior to joining Stepwise in 2016, Mjumbe served as a Digital Services Architect at the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Open Data and Digital Transformation. In 2012, he started at OpenPlans, where he helped to build tools that encouraged city residents to get involved in planning for the future of their cities.

The perspective of technology as a means for social empowerment guides Mjumbe's professional and extracurricular development.  In 2011, he was an inaugural Code for America Fellow, and in 2017 he was awarded a Technology and Democracy fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School. Additionally, Mjumbe volunteers with Coded by Kids as an instructor and a board member, and he is a member of the planning committee for the biannual International Conference on Appropriate Technology.