Work History
Currently returning to work after traveling for 9 months with my partner. Read our travel blog here.
VMware
Product Manager, Nov 2021 - May 2022
Worked with state and federal government agencies to build products while teaching product management skills to client teams.
Led cross-disciplinary team from defining product idea to MVP in 4 months for a state-wide program supporting on residents with disabilities. Created product roadmap, set success metrics, conducted user research (generative and usability), and garnered stakeholder buy-in.
Built trust between state client and estranged community of disability rights organizations using new features that addressed existing issues uncovered in research analysis: missing core user groups, outstanding risks, and communication gaps.
Improved backend performance of federal client’s technical flagship application within 3 weeks of joining and before major MVP launch. App loaded data 4x faster, resolving concerns of early users and stakeholders.
United State Digital Service
Senior Product Manager & User Researcher, Sept 2019 - Oct 2021
Identity Fraud in Unemployment Insurance: Led crisis team to create a mitigation strategy nationally to address identity fraud within unemployment insurance.
Led cross-disciplinary team to identify key technical vulnerabilities, prioritize possible solutions, and create national action plan to resolve findings.
Aligned Dept of Labor and White House on core problems causing identity fraud and foundational solutions.
Dept of Labor codified key recommendations in legal policy recommendations, and White House released $195M funding for states to implement key changes to their systems.
Assessment Generator: Supporting Asylum seekers with a product that ensures that applications are adjudicated (reviewed) equitable, fairly, and legally across all Asylum Offices in the US.
Successfully identified an 8-month path to a national rollout by negotiating with stakeholders to ensure that the feature development aligned with larger policy initiatives that were in-flux; this remained on-track for a national rollout in August 2020 despite the tumultuous year.
Implemented scrum best practices (sprints, retros, goals) and iterated to match team culture and ensure movement towards national rollout and larger team goals.
Identified and implemented metrics goals within the team and for external stakeholders: adoption metrics of our application, impact metrics of our application on the larger asylum process, and usability metrics for the application. This involved meetings with numerous groups of stakeholders, aligning the incentives to measure these metrics, and tracking them at regular intervals. Learned Tableau to analyze user adoption and usage metrics across all 11 asylum offices during iterative releases and shared metrics regularly with team - the first Asylum project to use Tableau and metrics in this way.
Successfully changed culture of federal partners towards product management best practices. Started using best practices within larger federal technology group and saw the practices copied by other teams: sharing bug reports and post-mortem learnings with colleagues and users, writing dynamic and understandable release notes for users, as well as setting up regular training sessions with users for large releases to introduce the features and the accessibility of the team. Evangelized and presented to 35 federal partners regarding the use of metrics and data within a product at the high-level and operational level and how to build that into a product roadmap.
Led product UI pivot from design decision to release. After design team realized the product framework for how asylum officers started the application needed to shift, I led the team to re-align UX & UI experience from the alpha design to the new “decision-first” framework. Identified logical and policy gaps within the product, wrote 150+ user stories and engineering tickets in 3 weeks for highly-complex logic that required policy, UI, and engineering re-alignment, and worked with stakeholders to ensure that all fringe use cases were resolved. For the release process itself: led creation of accessible user materials, designed and set-up training sessions across all asylum offices, and ensured a smooth process for this highly-complex release.
Brought levity to team culture when working on a heavy content area: using sprints to introduce countries to the team, turned a bug-finding session into a friendly competition, used a salad mix to bond with teammates and stakeholders, and wrote cards to team at start of COVID.
Hiring Qualified Candidates within the Federal Government: Supporting fair and equitable job opportunities by ensuring that qualified candidates are identified as “qualified” in their application process to the federal government throughout all federal agencies.
Led a government-wide “Best Practices for Modernizing Assessments” day for 1,000+ federal employees to learn private sector and federal practices around assessments. Wrote initial proposal, worked with federal partners at Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to organizing two events: one for senior leadership in hiring (CHCO Council), and one for all federal HR specialists and hiring managers (Best Practices for Modernizing Assessments). Led the content strategy: designed session content and flow for 13 sessions (from keynote to breakout sessions). Recruited speakers for across the private sector (including Microsoft, Indeed.com, and Stripe).
Identified key results for team to track and ensured team set measurable goals for results across the project portfolio. Compiled and aligned historic data to current metrics and future reporting to measure progress against goal milestones.
Navigated the process of gaining approval to continue testing and iterative development on a cornerstone application for all SME-QA hiring pilots with agencies to continue to be successful. Negotiated with stakeholders for approval process to ensure ease of documentation requirements for future
RideAlong
CEO & Co-Founder, Dec 2016 - April 2019
Built company focused on enabling safer interactions between law enforcement and vulnerable residents. Led company from prototype to launch to acquisition.
Raised $550,000+ of investment, closed $250,000+ of sales revenue, managed all staff and client relations, and oversaw operations and strategic growth. This included the prestigious accelerator program run by Y Combinator (Summer 2017 batch).
Led product vision and development from pilot to successful implementation: app saved Seattle Police Department $435,000 in 6 months by reducing 911 calls concerning “911 system high users” by 35% (1100 calls to 700). App was used by department (1,200 officers), with 40% of officers logging in regularly.
Served as Technology & Data Subject Matter Expert with Vera Institute on a competitive national grant awarded by Bureau of Justice Assistance (a department of the US Dept of Justice).
Won SXSW national government technology award (Spring 2017)
Led company growth: expanded policing product into neighboring law enforcement agencies within Washington State. Expanded product use case into health with San Francisco Department of Public Health (during the San Francisco’s Startup-In-Residency program, STIR, in Spring 2018).
Aligned support from diverse stakeholders (ACLU, National Alliance of Mental Illness, police departments, civilian oversight committees, etc.) during 5 purchasing processes nationally.
Spun company out from Code for America 2016 fellowship with co-founder, Meredith Hitchcock.
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Code for America
2016 Fellow - Product Manager & User Researcher, Jan 2016 - Nov 2016
Led from idea to field testing in 9 months with law enforcement - an extremely fast timeline.
Conducted 200+ hours of user research and analysis with 80+ users. Prioritized features for launch cycles to test assumptions and receive user feedback.
Spun project into standalone company (RideAlong) and continued growth from prototype. This is one of five projects in CFA fellowship history to be in use 3 years after fellowship ends (of 45+ projects).
Aligned government officials to use our product approach, culminating in City of Seattle’s first use of agile methodology in software. Led collaboration with ACLU and local service providers to build features that also protect civil liberties and humanize vulnerable populations.
Presented work at The White House (Obama Administration) as a Subject Matter Expert at the Data-Driven Justice initiative (June 2016).
Microsoft
User Researcher, Civic Innovation Fellow, June 2015 - Dec 2015
Expanded user research to uncover new user (civic tech engineers using virtual machines), aligned 3 internal teams to include features for users in upcoming release. Wrote user personas to guide future work.
Started national newsletter featuring on-the-ground civic work across 8 cities – leadership leveraged this to garner support with external partners from company’s measurable impact.
KBN Consulting
User Research & Project Management in Museums, Feb 2012 - May 2015
Worked with 8 museums to support user research and project management efforts
Conducted 500+ qualitative interviews and behavioral observations for 6 major museum research studies.
Designed, wrote, disseminated, and analyzed 4 survey studies for creative non-profits.
Presidio Trust
Docent Coordinator, Volunteer April 2012 - Dec 2012
Supervised, recruited, and trained 28 volunteer docents
Managed gallery space that hosted 8,500 people
Designed an interactive gallery guide
Developed 4 workshops and 2 training guides for volunteers
AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC)
Corps Member, Oct 2010 - July 2011
Worked with 6 government and non-profit organizations in environmental, education, and historic restoration projects
Earned Congressional Service Award and Presidential Service Award
Served as the Environmental Liaison and Project Outreach Liaison