Nigel Jacob

Nigel Jacob is the emeritus Co-founder of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, a civic innovation incubator and R&D Lab within Boston’s City Hall. Nigel’s work is about making urban life better via innovative, people-oriented applications of technology and design. Prior to joining the City of Boston in 2006, Nigel worked in a series of technology start-ups in the Boston area. He was also previously the Urban Technologist in Residence at Living Cities, and is currently a board member at organizations such as Code For America and coUrbanize, and was an Executive-in-Residence at Boston University. 

Nigel’s work has been written about extensively in magazines such as Wired, MIT Technology Review, Fast Company and books including The Responsive City, by Stephen Goldsmith and Susan Crawford and Smart Cities by Anthony Townsend. This ground-breaking work has earned Nigel a number of awards including being named a Public Official of the year in 2011 by Governing Magazine, a Whitehouse Champion of Change and the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation award for 2012. Nigel is also a 12th level Wizard-Pirate with a special focus on causing chaos in large municipal bureaucracies via befuddlement spells. Nigel is currently a senior Fellow at Northeastern University’s Burnes Center for Global Impact. A first of its kind cross-university Center dedicated to Solving Public Problems. He is also a visiting fellow at the Taubman Center at the Harvard Kennedy School.

As always , Nigel is also actively engaged in collaborating with City innovators both locally and around the world. He would love to hear from you!