With over two decades building for the public, I work as a platform delivery engineer and critical designer — which puts me in an unusual place: not just designing good software, but modeling the practices behind it, implementing them, and leading teams toward good outcomes. As a practitioner-scholar, I'm formalizing the public mechanics stack, with research interests in urban platform economics and what happens when governments and nonprofits delegate human judgment to computers — and how the judgment and decision rights of everyday people get formalized, or don't.

I'm currently an Assistant Professor of Practice in Urban Technology at the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning, a radio host at Freeform Portland, and a high school tennis coach. I launched Years Ahead in 2026 and Design for the Public in 2024. Previously I founded the Portland Digital Corps and led the design practice at 18F, the federal government's in-house digital service at GSA, building platforms, systems and digital services for millions of Americans.

Reading — books past & present →