Resume

Responsible for guiding accessibility beyond compliance, inclusive research, and trauma-informed strategy on VA.gov application teams.

• Led alignment on accessibility beyond compliance by initiating, co-drafting, and publishing VA.gov’s first accessibility strategy document with over 30+ stakeholders.
• Improved the percentage of specialists with balanced workloads by 14% in 2022. Created dashboards to prioritize work, weekly specialist check ins, collaborative office hours, and more.
• Increased the amount of research with disabled Veterans using assistive technologies from 0% of all studies in 2020 to nearly 12% in 2022 and disabled Veterans in the research recruitment database by twentyfold.
• Led the release of VA’s first Veteran-centered accessibility statement (which replaced a 16 year old inaccessible Section 508 page in the VA.gov footer).
• Co-facilitated and founded VA.gov's trauma community with over 40+ practitioners.

Responsible for leveling up and managing Ad Hoc designers, researchers, and a11y specialists.

• Initiated a grassroots inclusive research practice at VA.gov that standardized new methods for including Veterans from underserved communities.
• Authored guidance on conducting research with disabled Veterans using assistive technology for VA.gov researchers.
• Co-directed and authored Ad Hoc's Accessibility Beyond Compliance Playbook including 9 actionable plays for a more inclusive and equitable future in government.
• Served as a design manager for several practitioners across multiple teams. Provided weekly design feedback and critique during office hours.
• Co-founded a trauma-informed research practice at Ad Hoc.

Responsible for ensuring 12+ product teams launched accessible services at Veterans Affairs.

• Identified, prioritized, and wrote accessibility defect tickets using a combination of devices, screen readers (JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, TalkBack), and accessibility testing tools (axe, axe-coconut, headingsMap, nu checker).
• Provided accessibility feedback and design critique to wireframes and mockups. Created a suite of training workshops for designers on inclusive design effective practices like when to use links vs buttons.
• Contributed to the VA design system including, but not limited to, introducing one thing per page as a form design principle (replacing an inaccessible wizard pattern), designing an action link, and documenting accessibility bugs with remediations.
• Pair programmed with developers to remediate accessibility defects following effective practices from WCAG techniques, WAI-ARIA spec, and industry leaders.
• Led trauma-informed research with medical staff and VSOs informing form design changes that could save some Veterans months of work and potential retraumatization.

Designed an eligibility questionnaire which helped small business owners quickly understand and take steps towards financial relief. Served as an in-house accessibility specialist.

• Partnered with Hawaii, California, New Jersey and Pittsburgh to provide local financial relief to over 50,000 citizens.
• Led agile discovery efforts including interviews with small business SMEs and usability tests with minority-owned family businesses.
• Helped the County Elections team make online voter registration information more accessible (New York Times).

Led the inclusive redesign of a .gov’s job search experience to increase top-talent STEM candidate applications.

• Used Maximum Variation Sampling (MVS) inspired by the Matrix of Oppression, mixed-methods research, and participatory design with accessibility champions to mitigate unconscious exclusion.
• Completed analysis of 10 interviews and 500+ work activity notes by leading the facilitation of a Work Activity Affinity Diagram (WAAD) activity with 20+ members of the project team.
• Output personas, journey maps, and user stories through behavioral mapping exercises informed by contextual stories from the WAAD.
• Designed a WCAG 2.1 AA compliant career application flow which included 100+ high-fidelity wireframes in Sketch and clickable prototypes in InVision.
• Reduced average time to application from several minutes to less than 30 seconds.

Provided design and accessibility guidance to ensure Southern New Hampshire University's online student application experience was WCAG 2.1 AA compliant.

• Identified and corrected over 100+ accessibility issues and implemented inclusive design patterns including persistent visible labels and calm error validation.
• Wrote accessibility criteria as user stories for developers to reference and write test cases.

Served as a UX researcher and designer at various government agencines including DHS, Amtrak, and more.

Minor in Business Leadership and Computer Science. Mentored by Kim Gausepohl, Ph.D, AUXP as a UX intern at NIS.

Awarded the higher level credential of CPWA by passing both the CPACC and WAS exam.

• Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC), Credential ID 21JACJK053
• Web Accessibility Specialist (WAS), Credential ID 21MAWJK020