TheBridge profile: Ina Fried

Name: Ina Fried

Current City: San Francisco, CA

Current job: Chief Technology Correspondent at Axios. Author of Login, Axios' daily tech newsletter.

Past job: Recode, CNET

Q. Favorite spot for a coffee meeting? Hawaii

Q. Describe one way how a skill you learned in a previous job helped you in your new job. I've been writing for wire services since I was in college. City News Service, an LA-area news service I learned the hard way that you have to be able to always be writing the story in your head. That's served me well ever since.

Q. Job advice in three words? Do your homework

Q. How are you (or your company, org, nonprofit) currently bridging the gap between politics and tech? Living it, talking to smart people from both backgrounds. Challenging both groups' assumptions and my own.

Q: What can innovators teach regulators and vice versa? I think for a long time Silicon Valley and the tech industry more broadly just wanted the road as clear as possible and DC largely went along. Obviously that’s changed with Cambridge Analytica And other developments. I think the tech industry still has a lot to offer in terms of approaching problems from multiple angles and assuming the right answer isn’t necessarily just improving on the way things have always been done. On the flip side I think DC has experience in considering the impact of action and establishing rules of the road upon which more radical change can occur.

Q. Favorite app? Pokemon Go. I'm addicted as anyone who knows me can tell you. 

Q. Living person you admire? I'm inspired by so many in the trans community, including our current generation of leaders like Janet Mock and Laverne Cox as well as the amazing next generation coming out at a young age, folks like Jazz Jennings and also to the fierce parents enabling their kids to be who they are and defending them at every turn.

Q. Last time you were completely unplugged? Too long. There's a reason my newsletter is called Login (getlogin.axios.com) and not Logoff. But I just took a vacation and it was nice to unplug. 

Q. If you had to live in another city, which would it be? Probably Amsterdam, where I studied for a year in college. You can bike everywhere, easily travel to anywhere in Europe and are surrounded by culture and history.

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