Where are you from?
I am from the Midwest — specifically Carmel, Indiana. Compared to back home, the day-to-day weather here in the Bay is much more moderate, which has been nice.
School/grad year/major:
I am a third year studying Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley.
Last thing you searched on Bing:
How to use “custom polygons for filled maps in PowerBI.” We are looking into how to get this result in PowerBI.
Why did you choose Microsoft’s fellowship program?
I chose to join the team as a fellow because I knew I could learn so much from everyone at Microsoft in the Bay Area Tech and Civic Engagement team. I love the conversations I have, the projects I work on, and potential everything we do has.
What’s your favorite civic project in the Bay Area?
I recently learned of this project when I was looking into public transit mobility in SF. It provides a map of the Bay area with three filters: commute distance, commute mode, and median house price. It has you choose your work location. Then it displays a map of all of the locations in the Bay Area where you can live with that commute time for that method (car, carpool, transit, walking) and the house prices within that range. Such a well-thought-out project from One Bay Area.
Who is your civic tech mentor/idol?
My biggest mentor would be Scott Mauvais. It’s such a privilege because I get to report progress directly to him and hear his insights on every project. In such a short time, I’ve already learned so much from him and look forward to learning much more during the fellowship.
What projects are you working on for your position as tech fellow for Microsoft Bay Area?
I am working on an SF Crime project to find trends in the data as well as provide an easy data pipeline to get to using PowerBI. I created some cool PowerBI visualizations for Muni bus frequencies in each zip code and each specific bus stop. I’ve been learning about and contributing to Code for San Francisco projects as well.
What’s your favorite project Microsoft Bay Area has done?
I can’t wait to see the neighborhood resilience project scaled to cities across the nation. This will help communities build their resilience toolkit for when natural disaster may hit. This project has so much potential for good.
What excites you about civic tech?
Technology has the potential to do amazing things for government processes and services. I love that civic tech is making these more efficient by creating user tested and human-centered technology.
What’s one problem you hope civic tech will solve for cities?
I am confident that the future of civic tech will help increase engagement with citizens. Making it easier for people to provide their input on local changes as well as making it easy for local council members to review the input in meaningful ways will lead to an increase in citizen participation. I want to see a city where nearly every member provided input for council meeting agenda. I want it to be more common for people’s conversations to involve matters of local government.
