About

About Luke Fretwell.

Luke Fretwell is a champion of open, accessible technologies that drive collaborative and inclusive democracies.

He is the co-founder and CEO of ProudCity, a platform empowering local governments across the nation to deliver better digital services. Government Technology recognizes ProudCity as one of the nation’s leading civic technology companies on its GovTech 100 list for the past six years.

In 2009, he started GovFresh, where he writes about the intersection of democracy and technology.

Luke worked as a journalist for many years and has written for TechCrunch, Government Technology, FCW, FedScoop, StateScoop. A known government technology expert, he has been cited as a reference by media outlets, including The Washington Post.

Luke has helped a number of early-stage government-focused companies gain momentum, including FedScoop and StateScoop, where he stood up editorial and digital operations, and the open data platform company NuCivic (acquired in 2014), where he led product marketing.

In 2014, he founded Agile Government Leadership as a community project that brought awareness to open and agile methodologies for better digital service delivery by government. AGL is now Technologists for the Public Good.

In 2019, Luke served as product designer for California’s Alpha team, a short-term innovation project by the State of California to re-imagine CA.gov. He also worked with the state on Code California, aimed at helping to create open source software awareness inside government.

A civic hacker at heart, he’s built many projects, including: GovPress, a government WordPress theme; CityCamp, an internationally-adopted civic unconference focused on technology; and CivicDMV, a project to re-imagine the DMV in the context of digital.

His current project is Proudly Serving, an open playbook to help local government agencies build people-centered digital services.

Outside of civic technology, Luke has led the rebrand and product design for Inspire.com; was a designer, marketing and product manager for Technical Communities; and managed the executive management newsletter and press-related functions for the American Society of Association Executives.

His past volunteer service includes mentoring youth with Fairfax County’s (Virginia) Befriend-A-Child program; hosting a Bosnian refugee family with the International Rescue Committee; and providing hospice care support with Pathways Home Health and Hospice.

Luke graduated from George Mason University with degrees in Government & Politics and International Studies. He was editor-in-chief of the GMU newspaper, The Broadside, where he led staff to win the university’s first national Associated Collegiate Press honors.