May 22, 2026

Doing Big Things in Policy: It's All White Space

56 minutes

Wanna do big things? This week, a how-to guide for technically minded people who want to stop posting and start changing things — covering everything from why every globally important problem is "white space."

Joining Jordan are Kumar Garg, founder of Renaissance Philanthropy and a veteran of the Obama White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Remco Zwetsloot, co-founder of the Horizon Institute for Public Service, which builds pipelines into government for emerging-tech talent.

We discuss…

Why $10 million globally on lead remediation tells you everything about how undertalented the world's most important problems are

Ambition + humility as the Horizon Fellowship's selection criteria — and why most candidates need to hear the opposite of what they expect

"We care meetings" vs. "we decide meetings," the Geithner heuristic for surviving senior government roles

The tribal KPIs of the White House — what the Office of Public Engagement, speech writing, and comms actually want from a policy nerd

The conscious-incompetence quadrant and why "your job is not to be the expert, your job is to mobilize expertise"

The posting-to-policy pipeline, the rise of the individual writer, and the introspective work that public writing forces

My Bulgarian tanks fantasy vs. the value-over-replacement case for picking your own hobby horse

Horizon recently launched Launchpad, a Substack on working in emerging tech policy with advice, explainers, and conversations like this one — if you enjoyed this conversation, you’ll probably like their other stuff as well.

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