About

Hey there! I set up this personal site to share occasional posts about my work as well as culture, philosophy, and politics.

Why make a personal site at all? To me, they bring back fuzzy memories of the early internet I remember, back when people were expressing themselves through their own ramshackle pages hosted on GeoCities. Social media has brought more people online, but at the expense of personal expression and control. These days we don’t have to choose between the two! I hope this page encourages you to set up your own.

For work: I’m a software architect for Change Agent, where we’re building enterprise AI products for the people and organizations dedicated to making the world a better place. I’m also the Director of AI Research for Unfiltered.Media, a boutique digital firm with decades of experience that’s helping raise the bar on progressive digital strategy. Before my transition to the digital sphere I was a progressive policy advocate, most recently as the Field and Events Manager for the Coalition on Human Needs.

My areas of expertise include machine learning, natural language processing, and all things data and Python. I also build websites.

Some examples of my work online:

• Inbox Zero, an ethical, AI-powered list management tool that help create more good in the world.
• Change Agent, an enterprise AI solution for changemakers that acts as a direct replacement for mainstream AI chat services.
• I built and updated the Coalition on Human Needs’ State Data Resource Library, with a particular focus on analyzing the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse survey. This work brought critical and localized statistics on poverty, food insecurity, difficulty paying household expenses, and housing to thousands of policy advocates.
• As an undergrad at UC Davis, I authored a report on the 2013 Guantanamo detainee hunger strike for the Guantanamo Testimonials Project that you can see here. Two weeks later, U.S. Southern Command ordered Guantanamo authorities to stop issuing figures of their hunger-striking prisoners. My work was reviewed by the Guantanamo Blog.

My personal interests include:

• Music: I’ve made music under a variety of monikers over the years. I love death metal and electronic music.
• Photography: Over the years I’ve shot landscape, portrait, and product photography. See more at my Instagram account.
• Philosophy: I have a BA in Philosophy from the University of California, Davis.
• Consuming less and creating more: The democratization of production enabled by digital solutions (e.g. digital photography, recording music on computers instead of studios) has been offset, in my view, by the increasing strain on the time of people living in the attention economy. We carry super powerful communication devices devoted to sapping our attention at all times. Lately I’ve been trying to take in less information and put out more of my own - to varying degrees of success!