Portfolio
Explore My Work
Designing Performance Management Products for the California Department of Social Services
Emphasizing the professional skill set developed in the Master of Public Administration (MPA) program at the Maxwell School, students engage in a management consulting capstone project, rather than a writing a thesis.
This project produced seven grants management products for the California Department of Social Services Program’s Guaranteed Income Pilot (Budget: $12M) and Promise Neighborhoods (Budget: $25M) projects.
Click on the image of our project summary poster to open the full poster and read about goals and deliverables.
My role in the project involved leading the design and facilitation of a tailored agile project management approach using Scrum values, events, artifacts, and Kanban in collaboration with the CDSS client team and Maxwell consulting team. The method allowed us to continuously deliver, inspect/receive feedback, and adapt products to client specifications.
My role also included lead development for the Guaranteed Income Work Plan Dashboard, Key Performance Indicator Dashboard, and Promise Neighborhoods Performance Work Plan/Reporting model.
Performance Improvements to US Agency Priority Goal Reporting
A Performance Review of OPM’s FY23-24 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion APGs
Chris Mihm, retired Managing Director for Strategic Issues at the US Government Accountability, mentored a class of 20 Maxwell MPA students to apply the standards set by the Government Performance and Results Acts (GPRA/GPRMA) and the related OMB Circular A-11 Part 6 to a given issues area.
My work tracks OPM’s performance in meeting its Agency Priority Goals (APGs) to implement high level, whole-of-goverment DEI projects.
I recommend simple, but substantial, performance management improvements, including adjustments to performance data visualization, implementing cumulative narrative reports, and identifying task precedents/dependencies and task decomposition.
You can read my memo here, or click the image to your left.
A management case study at the Maxwell School
DEI Management Speaker Series at the Maxwell MPA
This spring ‘24 semester speaker series invited DEI leaders from the public, private, and non-profit management sectors for open format, informal discussions with MPA students about operationalizing DEIA practices in their sectors.
I managed speaker identification, recruitment and scheduling; student and MPA department engagement; event facilitation and post-event evaluation.
I also designed a the visual theme for promotional materials, which you can see on the schedule.
At the Maxwell School
Curriculum Development: The Talking Circles on Race and Racism
In this 2015 and 2016 project, I was hired to manage the first top-to-bottom curriculum and program transformation for a place-based non-profit’s flagship training program that had run for the previous 15 years.
I managed an in-depth organizational assessment to align the program with new strategic goals set by the Executive Director and developed an Organizational Change Management (OCM) strategy to redesign the program to meet the needs of BIPOC community members and program participants, which had evolved substantially since the program’s inception.
I designed tailored program materials, including an extensive anti-racist curriculum to meet the needs of our racially diverse community and program participants and a design and facilitation of a performance-based train-the-trainers program for new facilitators.
Click on the image of the curriculum to preview the final training manual.
For the Multicultural Resource Center
Better Serving Seniors though Process Improvements to Legal Clinics
This gantt chart supported a process improvement project for pro bono estate planning offered to clients over the age of 60 and at or below 200% of the federal poverty rate at LawNY.
The project increased clients served by 100% (from ~12 to 24 annually) while maintaining the same level of staff time billed to this service — meeting the definition of a Kaizen performance improvement!
Because staff were not familiar with project management frameworks or tools, I built a custom gantt chart on a product staff were already comfortable with: Google Sheets.
This project worked well for a “traditional” PM tool because each step of the process was known. My key value add was providing an easy to understand methodology that relied on visualization and structure (the gantt chart) that minimized administrative burden on both clients and staff.
For Legal Assistance of Western New York
Organizational Equity Audit
Recommendations for Talent Acquisition, Onboarding, Mentorship, Supervision, Grievance, and Data Collection
For Legal Assistance of Western New York
Will Change Work?
Assessing a New Model for Alcohol and Drug treatment in a Social Services Office
A management case study at the Maxwell School
Centering the Most Impacted in Community Change
A Program to Build Collaborative Networks for Local Carceral Reform
For the Multicultural Resource Center