Scoped problem solving
One service, workflow, product, or delivery problem, with an agreed output and an end date. I look at how the work actually runs and who decides what. Then I design the fix and build it.
Start a scoped projectI lead the delivery of complex technology products and programs. My work covers product direction, service design, cross-functional teams, budgets, and the decisions that turn an idea into a working service. I also design and build software, teach, and research how technology changes the way people and organizations operate.
Last played Living My Life — Deerhunter
Ways I can contribute
Which one fits depends on how much of the problem is already defined, and on how long you need someone in the building.
Embedded delivery
Hands-on work inside an existing team for a fixed engagement. I do the research, sit in the decisions, build the prototypes, and help ship them. You don’t get a deck at the end of it.
Talk about embeddingFractional leadership
Part-time senior design or delivery leadership. I set how the work gets done, fix the staffing, coach the leads, and clear what’s blocking delivery. The point is to leave with the team able to run it themselves.
Talk about fractionalHow I get into an organization
How an engagement starts and where the change usually shows up.
Listening
I start with the people doing the work and the people on the receiving end of it. Most of what’s wrong is already known somewhere inside the organization.
Documenting
I write down how the service actually runs: the steps, the handoffs, the decisions, and who is accountable for each one.
Evaluating
We agree what’s worth fixing first, against the real constraints: budget, procurement, staffing, and the approvals standing in the way.
Building
I stay through implementation. The engagement ends when the work has actually changed and the team can hold it.
Where I have done this
Eight years of federal delivery, plus the practices and programs built around it.
Head of Design, 18F · 2017–2025
The federal government’s largest in-house design practice
More than 40 designers and design managers. I hired the government’s first in-house service designers and stood up the first service design unit in federal service. I built the GS-13/14/15 career ladders and the performance profiles the practice ran on, and approved its hiring for four years.
Principal senior advisor, TTS Deputy Commissioner
Strategic operations for a federal technology organization
Workforce planning, role definitions, and organizational planning across Technology Transformation Services, alongside the software licensing, vendor, and authorization work that kept technical teams able to do their jobs.
Head of Communications, 18F
A publishing program that kept up with the work
I took communications on alongside design because our public account of the work had fallen behind the work itself. I rebuilt the editorial and publishing process and sponsored the website redesign as its product owner. That left a public record other people could draw on later.
Executive reporting, 18F
400+ engagements, accounted for
When Congress asked for an accounting of 18F’s work, I produced the inventory. More than 400 engagements went from scattered operational history to a record an outside reader could actually use.
Founding Director · 2025
Portland Digital Corps
More than a hundred people signed up. Fifty designers, developers, strategists and data people rebuilt six nonprofit websites on eight-week sprints. The format has since been picked up elsewhere.
Organizer · October 16–17, 2024
Design For The Public 24
A two-day unconference run with Technologists for Public Good that brought more than eighty people to Portland from across the country.
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Start a conversation
Tell me the problem, the deadline, and who has to agree. I’ll tell you whether I’m the right person for it and what a first engagement would look like.
Currently building Vloora, which works on how people keep authority over AI agents acting on their behalf.
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