Resume last updated: September 25, 2024

Experienced civic technology project lead and service designer driven by their background in social service delivery and trauma-informed care to build community-centered services, equitable digital experiences, and people-driven systems that create lasting change in government.

Work Experience

CODE FOR AMERICA, SAFETY NET INNOVATION LAB

Staff Service Designer, Medicaid Ex Parte Project Lead, Renewals UX Lead

May 2022–Present

Defined and launched the Medicaid automatic renewal service initiative scope, strategy, and cultivation efforts to improve program delivery resulting in three state partnerships

  • Lead a cross-functional team and advocates to surface current problem areas and opportunities impacting State automatic renewal client success rates through data analysis, existing federal policy review, and advocate publications

  • Defined service offering approach across multiple disciplines, including project timelines, key activities, outputs, and standard key performance indicators

  • Developed partnership selection criteria and promotional tools, such as lead generation forms, landing page copy, and overview materials to support outreach and cultivation

  • Presented to executive level stakeholders in States, created meeting agendas and presentations outlining the automatic renewal service offering and key questions for technical, operational, and policy staff to inform engagement scopes

  • Developed scopes of work defining core challenges, highlighting current metrics, defining success, and outlining streams of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies that support the identification of potential problem areas for short and long term consideration

Led a multidisciplinary team to improve Pennsylvania and Colorado automatic renewal rates through policy, system, and operational lens

  • Developed team working norms, project management tools, and meeting cadence to manage team towards success in truncated project timelines

  • Developed a project research plan with improvement metrics and key hypotheses to validate core assumptions gathered through reviewing quantitative data reported through the Center of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), KFF, Georgetown University, and reports from advocate organizations

  • Reviewed current datasets, technical documentation, operational manuals, and policy documents to analyze and evaluate automatic renewal process

  • Led multiple discovery and working sessions with key program experts and Deloitte

  • Led three, 4-hour workshops with executive level operational, policy, and technical state staff to review documentation. During these workshops we worked to build a shared understanding of the renewal pipeline using quantitative data and service blueprint, co-develop new approaches to policy, operational, and/or technical solutions that cause low automatic renewal approval rates, and prioritize interventions

  • Developed written report, service blueprint, and supportive visualizations that summarize findings into short term and long term policy, operational, and technical plays that will improve state automatic renewal approval rates

  • In Pennsylvania, presented key findings to executive and Governor’s office staff resulting in the immediate implementation of short-term recommendations with an impact on 5% of the total Medicaid population (approximately 85,200 individuals a year). More recommendations are being implemented in Sept 2024, positively affecting an additional 100,000 individuals.

  • In Colorado, presented recommendations that would result in a 16% increase (from 50% to 66%) in automatic renewal rates. This translates into positively affecting approximately 143,700 individuals and saving 167,650 caseworker hours a year, and saving the state approximately $86 million dollars in administrative costs associated with program churn.

Rolled out automatic renewal pilot to statewide scale in Minnesota to 87 counties

  • Identified and gained buy-in for system changes that enhanced caseworker processing, client communications, and policy and systems alignment through process maps, research, and prototypes that supported the development of business requirements

  • Co-designed and developed operational and training materials to support statewide implementation of automatic renewal to caseworkers and frameworks for Minnesota operational staff to develop new training material using human centered design methods

  • Worked alongside Minnesota’s policy and operations team to develop guiding policy and identify burdensome policies while bringing in learnings from the pilot to simplify policy for greater impact

  • Supported Minnesota’s adoption of qualitative feedback methods used during the pilot phase in the statewide implementation, including development of office hours, collecting pain points and opportunities for streamlined effort, supporting Minnesota state staff in developing a plan for gathering qualitative feedback to continue long-term development

  • Monitored the success of statewide implementation by developed a quantitative survey with data science colleagues to collect success metrics, time metrics, and case information

  • Led co-design efforts with caseworkers after statewide implementation to improve training, operational guidance in the short term, and design wireframes for future system interfaces for technical improvement in the long term implementation

  • Scale resulted in automatic renewal success rate rising from 0% to 63% of the non-MAGI population (or approximately 160,000 individuals a year). As a result, an estimated $636 million in Medicaid benefits reached automatically-renewed aged, blind and disabled residents, while saving 122,000 hours annually in caseworker time a year.

Developed design artifacts (service blueprints, journey maps, flow diagrams) to build greater understanding between pilot and scale documenting the experience of implementing automatic renewal processes from a policy, program, client, caseworker, and technical perspective.

  • Artifact content was built on insights surfaced in design research interviews with caseworkers and informed by quantitative evidence

  • Artifacts supported generating high-level programmatic priorities, visualized the automatic renewal process, and helped the team navigate a quick and complex delivery environment. 

Designed and implemented a caseworker pilot for automatic renewal in Minnesota

  • Led qualitative and quantitative research strategies; working closely with qualitative research and data science to collect metrics and improve processes

  • Developed a caseworker survey to be used in the pilot that would support evaluation of administrative burden using time as a metric, case information to assess for complexity

  • Developed a cadence of pilot training, working sessions with caseworkers, qualitative interviews, feedback forms, quantitative surveys, and co-design sessions to make daily iterative improvements to the pilot policy and operations. Invited Minnesota state stakeholders to working sessions and co-design sessions to provide expertise, build understanding of caseworker processes, and generate buy-in

  • Identified opportunities to improve policies, processes, technology systems, and client-facing communications for statewide implementation based on quantitative survey results, qualitative interviews with caseworkers, co-design workshops, and working sessions

  • Designed and developed operational and training materials for the new automatic renewal caseworker process in an existing legacy system

Led service design, qualitative research, and UX design discovery workstreams for Minnesota Medicaid renewals effort, prioritized opportunities with cross-program stakeholders

  • Conducted design research with executive level stakeholders, delivery staff, and direct Medicaid clients to understand the current mental model, pain points, and opportunities for the Medicaid renewals experience.

  • Developed texting and email storyboard prototypes and wireframes to develop process, design, and technical requirements with clients and caseworkers

  • Developed goals and hypotheses for UX design workstream for developing a document upload function in the current system

  • Synthesized design research into design artifacts and share out report presentations

  • Identified opportunities to improve renewal process and developed a collaborative cross-stakeholder workshop series that included high level stakeholders, operational staff, community advocates, and caseworkers to maximize buy-in for innovative approach

NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity (NYCO) | New York, NY

Design Lead, Service design studio

August 2021–May 2022

Community-Centered Service Design Program Initiative Lead

  • Co-designed the second iteration of the Designed by Community Fellowship Program with previous community based organization partner TakeRoot Justice and cohort 1 fellows to develop and write the cohort 2 RFP

  • Implemented an innovative RFP selection process with the NYC Mayor’s Fund

Community-Centered Service Design Improvement Development

Scoped two concurrent workstreams for the Designed by Community Fellowship Program:

  • The first workstream aimed to develop a community-centered and refined Service Design methodology to use and disseminate as an expansion of the existing Tools + Tactics for Service Design projects in NYC government

  • The second workstream administered design thinking processes to develop a framework for government projects to measure and evaluate relationship building, whole-person funding, and power sharing while partnering with community based organizations and resident communities

Digital Innovation + Government Efficiency

  • Led a stream of work to streamline the Administration for Children's Services's child care voucher application and operational efficiency across several internal departments. 

  • Co-developed a service blueprint of the current process with high level stakeholders, vetted with caseworkers, and used as a tool for interviewing community members

  • Convenings include NYC Human Resources Administration (HRA) and NYC Department of Education (DOE)

Product and Design Strategist, service design studio and product & technology

May 2020–August 2021

Community-Centered Service Design Initiative Development

  • Co-designed, produced, and delivered the Designed by Community Fellowship Program.

  • Developed partnership with TakeRoot Justice, a grassroots advocacy organization. Led outreach, co-designed a fellows selection process, designed and delivered a Service Design Curriculum to NYC Housing Authority (NYCHA) community leaders

  • Coached fellows towards developing 4 diverse community-driven projects that supported the health and happiness of NYCHA residents. Supported fellows in the development and execution of implementation plans

Product Management

  • Led product management for the multi-disciplinary WorkingNYC team, the first collaboratively-owned, cross-agency product from NYCO’s Product Team. 

  • Developed high level scopes for content, UX design, technical development, and strategic initiative workstreams

  • Led the scoping, definition, and prototyping of Asana, Airtable, and Gather Content (CMS) content management tool with multidisciplinary team to support non-technical teams

  • Developed journey maps with pain points and opportunities for process improvement

Early Childhood Research

  • Led this multi-agency service design project to define an initiative that aimed to better connect NYC families experiencing houselessness to City-funded child care. 

  • Collaborated with NYCO’s program and evaluation team to conduct project scoping. Wrote design brief and facilitation guides. Led overall design strategy and delivery. 

  • Coordinated and executed the research of 11 Department of Homeless Services (DHS) family shelters and interviewed 30 direct care providers, case managers, and directors. 

  • Coordinated efforts with Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners from the DOE, DHS, and Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH). 

  • Recommended next steps to the First Deputy Mayor’s team and the NYC Children’s Cabinet.

Digital Product Training and Outreach Specialist, product and technology

October 2017–May 2020

NYC Rent Subsidy Outreach Application Tool Research & Development

  • Collected and synthesized all technical and training requirements from the three stakeholder outreach teams during the application development phase

  • Designed and delivered the user research and user acceptance testing protocols for an online application tool that led to continuous product improvements

  • Led the design, production, and implementation of training and outreach for new software products, including the Online Application Pilot with NYC Department of Finance and ACCESS NYC’s Mayoral Public Engagement Unit Benefits Screener pilot

Digital Product Training and Outreach

  • Connected to 100+ community-based organizations, public schools, political offices, teacher’s associations, schools of social work, hospitals, re-entry service providers, libraries, and other resource hubs to lead community training, workshops, and outreach for ACCESS NYC, Growing Up NYC, and Generation NYC digital products. 

  • Collected and synthesized community feedback to drive product improvement over time

Digital Communications

  • As a COVID-19 proactive response, designed, developed, tested, and produced the monthly ACCESS NYC social services and resource digital newsletter, with an audience of 80,000+

  • Initiated a multilingual digital outreach approach, including the development of an open-source multilingual dataset and multilingual digital newsletter

  • Developed additional social media and communications materials for Growing Up NYC and Generation NYC

Pursuit (Formerly C4Q) | Queens, NY

Senior Program Manager

November 2016–October 2017

  • Developed and executed 2 two-day Hackathons, guiding over 100 participants through the training and navigation of the NYC Open Data portal. Tasked fellows with using the City's open datasets and web sharing APIs to create web and mobile digital products that would help residents connect to government and social services.

  • Managed the curriculum for the technical and career development of 32 programming fellows from historically marginalized and under-resourced communities. Initiated curriculum improvements based on feedback.

  • Advocated for and worked with NYC’s Human Resources Administration (HRA) to secure Pursuit’s status as a verified City Workforce Development training program, enabling fellows receiving social services benefits to retain their benefits while in training. Advocated for and sourced DEI and mental health response training programs for program and organization staff.

Education

New York University | Tisch School of Arts

2014–2016

Masters of Professional Studies (MPS)
Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP)

Masters thesis project, Every Vote, is a digital product prototype that enables online voter registration applications to be submitted through a fax automation to local elections offices for those without state issued identification.

University of Florida

2005–2009

Bachelors of Science (BS)
Psychology