Mission
About Me
I am the CEO/Co-Founder of Civic Insight, a civic tech startup focused on making information about buildings available to the public in a simple and easy to use interface. I have 10 years of experience bringing innovative technology projects to civic-minded organizations. Previously, I was a Code for America Fellow in 2012 and co-creator of BlightStatus for the City of New Orleans.
Before Code for America, I built Digress.it, an online community and open-source project that allows for paragraph-by-paragraph commenting on complex texts. Digress.it is now used by universities, governments and libraries across the country. I also worked with Cornell University to build RegulationRoom.org, a project that was chosen by the Department of Transportation (DOT) as its open-government flagship initiative and received a Leading Practices Award by the White House.
I also currently serve on the City of Oakland Public Ethics Commission and the co-founder and Director of Technology for OpenOakland, a non-profit that works closely with Oakland’s City Hall promote civic innovation and open government.
Previous Work
Highlights
2014
- Case Study: Book: Innovative State: How New Technologies Can Transform Government by Aneesh Chopra - Turning Big Data into Actionable Information
- Guest Speaker: Berkeley University - Graduate School of Journalism - Experiences of Building Tools for Civic Engagement
- Speaker: Strata Conference - Government Data on Both Sides of the Bridge
- Speaker: League of California Cities - Case Studies on How To Leverage Public, Private, and Non-Profit Partnerships to Drive Better Land Use Planning
- Speaker: Campaign Tech West - Ideas & IPAs - Startup Spotlight
- Speaker: ESRI Startup Zone Demo Theatre
- Speaker: Open Data Van San Diego
- Speaker: Inland Empire Civic Data Forum (Hosted by California Forward and Code for America ) -
- Radio Interview: Digital Politics Radio - How Visualization and Integration of Databases Aids Government Workers and Citizens in Making Sense of Code Enforcement and Building Permits
- Radio Interview: KQED - Hacking for Democracy: Code for America Summit
- Speaker: National League of Cities - Congress of Cities - Innovation and Entrepreneurship
- Speaker: Code for America Summit - Building A Civic Tech Ecosystem: A Data Driven Approach to Rebuilding Neighborhoods in Dallas
- Speaker: Bay Area Digital Government Summit 2014 - Open Data, Crowdsourcing and Mitigating Information Requests
- Guest Lecturer: Berkeley University - College of Environmental Design
2013
- Speaker: Personal Democracy Forum - Building Civic Communities the Open Source Way
- Press Conference: Oakland City Hall - Introducing Oakland's Code for America Fellows
- Speaker: Maker Faire - OpenOakland: MAKE YOUR CITY
- Speaker: Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference : In Your Hands: Digital Tools for Collecting & Interpreting Place-Based Data
- Guest Speaker: Berkeley University - Graduate School of Journalism - Civic Engagement in Oakland
- Speaker: Berkeley University (CITRIS) - Can Open Data Improve Democratic Governance?
- Speaker: Woodstock Digital - Open Data in Oakland and New Orleans
- Speaker: PopTech! - Sparks of Brilliance Immersion
2012
- Mentor: Google Summer of Code
- Participant / Presentor: Personal Democracy Forum: Applied Conference in New York Won 2nd place in Hackthon
- Organizer: City Camp - Un-Conference in Oakland City Hall
- Organizer: Code:NOLA - Hackathon in New Orleans
- Organizer: Code for Oakland - Hackathon in Oakland
- Speaker: OakX - The Data-Driven City
- Radio Interview: Turnstyle - Reducing Blight in New Orleans
- Collabator: Youth Radio - Worked with Youth Radio to launch Forage City
- Speaker: Code for America Summit - Announcing BlightStatus
- Participant: Knight News Challenge Winners