Current Work
My current work is focused on a research project with the NJ Office of Innovation, studying unemployment through a human-centered. Additionally, with What Works Cities within the Results for America team, I am adapting a coaching curriculum born from our work with Kansas City, MO; training city governments to sustain data practices beyond one administration. Last, but not least, I’m supporting the Global Designing Cities initiatives in the development of different initiatives and planning for the new year of PlacemakingX.
NJ Office of Innovation
The New Jersey Office of Innovation and is currently refining the beta version of the New Jersey Career Network (NJCN) –one of the nation’s first digital coaching and support platforms to help residents find meaningful, gainful employment. In order to thoughtfully determine the next steps of this digital platform, we are conducting qualitative study to gain a deeper and holistic understanding of New Jerseyan’s journey to ensure alignment between job seekers’ needs and the purpose of NJCN.
What Works Cities
Based on work developed for with Kansas City, MO; I am working to establish supports and systems so that Tulsa has a deep organizational culture of data-driven governance that can be sustained across political transitions and other stresses that may occur in management and leadership. This includes with staff trainings, help with data sharing, and stakeholder engagement processes.
PlacemakingX
PlacemakingX went live in June 2019, with 100 leaders in the field. Now, the network is formed by 100+ leaders and 700+ advocated from 69 countries.
The movement is increasingly being defined as placemaking by communities not just for communities—evolving from professionals drafting place-sensitive plans to communities creating place-driven actions. We are developing the structures, programs, and services to support our community moving forward.
Global Designing Cities Initiative
I supported the work of Streets for Kids, developing a child-focused design guide to inspire leaders, inform practitioners, and empower communities to make cities around the world better for children and their caregivers.
Relevant Experience
Placemaking & Urban Planning
My passion about cities and the integration of vibrant communities within them stems from prior study, current work, and ongoing travel. Being a Program Manager at PlacemakingX allowed me to learn directly from the best placemaking practitioners around the world, while working directly with Fred Kent and Kathy Madden gave provided me the necessary tools for implementation.
Learnings from these fields can help create the necessary structures to implement placemaking strategies and best practices. This will allow us to better engage communities, ensuring that portals are not only an output but a collaborative process that provides lasting impact.
Creating Great Spaces in Riyadh – Confidential
On February 2019, The Placemaking Fund team, together with the Center for Local Governance, initiated a placemaking process for two public spaces in Central Riyadh: Al Futah Park and Umm Suleim. These spaces were selected as initial pilots to demonstrate the effectiveness of the placemaking techniques so that this approach could be applied more widely in the future.
Buskers & Urban Culture
During my last year at NYU, I studied how subway stations act as social spaces in NYC and the importance of musicians in them. Moreover, I questioned if these performances present a possibility of democratizing culture in the city. The lens through which this study was done, looking at subway stations as platforms for spontaneous interactions and community development, has interesting similarities with portals and their potential.
Network Development
By having worked at two initiatives, What Works Cities and PlacemakingX, from the very start, I understand the challenges of growing a network, as well as the possibilities of building international communities, and how they can be promoted through virtual collaborations, events, shared resources, and more.
What Works Community of Cities
The What Works Community of Cities is a network comprised of cities that is designed to facilitate the ongoing learning of city sponsors and staff together from peers, experts, and resources.
PlacemakingX
PlacemakingX is a network of placemaking thought leaders, public space activists, regional network leaders, and professionals from all over the world.
The network drives change by amplifying the placemaking movement, advocating for systemic change, and accelerating impact.
Strategic Design
Strategic design is a way of thinking and working that can be brought to any field and project. At Shared_Studios, this could play out in different ways. For starters, discovering a placemaking plan that is right for the organization and its communities would be an interactive process, discovering the unique needs and opportunities. Additionally, I’ve created curriculums to train teams remotely in different areas and is something that we could do for placemaking as well.
Leading Change: Strategies for Building & Sustaining Data Capacity in Your City
What does it take to build a best in class evidence-based city? Obviously, it requires investing in technical skill sets, codifying policies, building infrastructure, and clear processes for continued action. While these technical components are indispensable, they are insufficient.
Pulling from the lessons of success, we created modules based on human-centered design to help city governments lay the groundwork for embedded and sustaining data practices. While this engagement supports individual growth, it is also designed to build the catalytic capabilities of the team as an accelerant for organizational change.
Interim-street Interventions Workshop
Changing decades of embedded practice in urban street design can be challenging. Limited funding, regulatory restrictions, and a lack of proven local precedents can lead to hesitation in the face of innovative design solutions. Interim design strategies–such as tapping into the low-cost power of paint, flexi-posts, and planters–are a method to enable faster change. Cities can use quick-build tools and tactics to improve their streets and public spaces in the near-term.
For this session, an interactive game was created to better understand the actions and challenges in the process of implementing, and measuring the effectiveness of temporary street interventions. The audience was composed mainly by city governments.