Department of Veterans Affairs

Accessibility Strategist & Designer

January 2023 - Present

I am fortunate to be continuing my career in civic tech at the federal level at VA. I’m a member of the VA’s Office of the CTO team. Our goal: to improve Veterans’ lives with better software.

My role on the team is to continue raising the bar in “accessibility beyond compliance” on VA.gov and the VA: Health and Benefits mobile app.

July 2024: I’m officially a DHS Trusted Tester now

August 2023: Blind Veterans can now read decision letters

June 2023:

• Presented at Digital.gov Government UX Summit alongside a contracting partner, here’s a YouTube recording: “Accessibility Research in Action: VA’s Health and Benefits Mobile App”.

• This article summarizes our talk: Design, Test, Repeat: Building Accessibility in Digital Government

• Participated in a panel at DrupalCon 2023: “Adding the "A" to DEI+A - the impact of the Executive Order on the work of government agencies.”

US Digital Service (USDS)

Designer & Accessibility Strategist

February 2019 - January 2023 (4 years)

I was incredibly honored to be a member of USDS, a talented, mission-driven team of technologists, designers, and product strategists. These were some of the smartest and kindest people I have ever worked with in my career.

We were all fully dedicated to our shared mission: to deliver better government services to the American people (as well as those seeking asylum or citizenship) through technology and design. Some highlights:

November 2022: Meeting Veterans Where They Are with Accessible Mobile Tech

October 2022:

• Article about how Veterans with Disabilities Help Modernize VA.gov

• CivicActions asked me to talk about our accessibility process on VA.gov.

May 2022: Presented at the Code for America Summit with Ad Hoc colleagues - Accessibility beyond compliance: centering disabled people in government technology

April-May 2022: There’s a new series of blogs on accessibility here in the VA Office of Information Technology and I was thrilled to participate along with my colleagues in the VA 508 Office to promote this essential work.

• Apr 22: Accessibility is Part of OIT’s Service to Veterans

• May 6: Communicating Through Color Contrast is Essential to Designing Accessibility

• May 13: Document Structure: The Accessibility Feature You Don’t Notice Until It’s Not There

• May 20: Picture Perfect: How Describing a Picture Is Part of Accessible Design

• May 25: Before You Hit ‘Send’, Consider these Email Accessibility Tips

March 2022: Here’s a blog post where I talk in detail about Why I Serve.

October 2021: Presented at the Interagency Accessibility Forum with two contracting partners. “Accessibility First: Creating a Native Mobile App for Veterans.”

June 2021: My team and I won a 2021 Service to the Citizen award.

April 2021: I was featured in this article about how we do Veteran-centered design in the Office of the CTO at VA.

March 2021: I wrote an article about a day I spent at my local VA Medical Center to observe a mass COVID vaccine clinic.

March 2020: I did a talk at the Girl Geek X conference with my friend and colleague Lisa Koenigsberg. Girl Geeks Gone Gov: Stories of how two middle-aged girl geeks found themselves working for the government at US Digital Service for the career adventure of a lifetime, and why you should think about a career in civic tech too.

September 2019: I joined the fantastic Office of the CTO team at the Department of Veterans Affairs as a designer and accessibility strategist. Our goal: to improve the lives of Veterans, their families, and their caregivers by facilitating the creation of interactive experiences on VA.gov on par with the private sector.

• Designed and delivered a SAVE LIVES Act tool in 5 days. It allows an additional 24 million Veterans, spouses, and caregivers to sign up to get a COVID vaccine at a VA facility.

• Designed and delivered a COVID screening tool for VA health facilities in 12 days. Created service design-related materials for various VA facilities, including posters, flyers, etc.

• The screener has successfully screened over 22 million patients and employees since June 1, 2020. Some employees were waiting 42 minutes to get into work. The screener reduced that time to zero.

• Here’s another article about the COVID-19 screening tool, and how a college graduate’s prototype started our VA team down the development path.

• VA’s digital COVID-19 screening for Veterans, employees, aids in low infection rate

February 2019: My first USDS assignment was at the Office of Personnel Management with the goal of improving the federal hiring process. We ran two experimental hiring pilots at two federal agencies with overwhelmingly successful results:

• The resulting policy memo issued Sept. 13, 2019

• Agencies find higher quality candidates under new Digital Service, OPM hiring pilot

• USDS wants to fix the ‘black hole’ USAJOBS with alternative hiring assessment

• USDS applying its own lessons learned to fix federal hiring, acquisition

• HHS teams up with USDS for IT hires

Some of the specific things I contributed:

• Conducted user feedback interviews with multiple stakeholders during and after the pilots, then synthesized that feedback for further analysis and insights.

• Created materials for various workshops, trainings, meetings, worksheets, 1-pagers, etc.

• Produced data visualizations to convey the progress and success of the two pilots.

• Contributed to the final report (writing, data analysis, graphics).

• New Hiring Pilot Could Help Agencies Find Qualified Candidates Faster (this article displays one of the infographics I created)

Citigroup

Senior UI/UX
Designer

February 2018 -
February 2019
(1 year)

I was a contract UI/UX designer working on two Angular-based, mission-critical applications for financial forecasting and risk analysis.

• Led requirements gathering and task analysis activities with business users.

• Held design critiques and feedback sessions with all stakeholders to get buy-in before development started.

• Prototyped new designs and tested them with end users.

• Created wireframes and style guides for development team.

• Created and edited CSS files to ensure adherence to the Citi visual design standards.

• “High five…I was scared the most with this use case. It was a deal breaker.”

• “It was a pleasure working with someone who is really passionate about what they are doing.”

• “Can we put you in charge of this project? I think you are the most sane person here.”

UI/UX and Graphic Design Consultant

August 2016 -
February 2019
(2.5 years)

Selected Projects

I was a self-employed design consultant for various short-term projects. Project timelines varied depending on the client and the project requirements. Customers included The Home Depot and Arts Access International.

SAS

Senior Systems Developer

September 2005 -
April 2011
(6 years)

Planning App: Designed and supported a custom deployment tool. Created wireframes for new features, implemented design, usability tested features with users, created graphic assets, maintained CSS style sheets. I was the company-wide expert in SAS software planning and installation data.

SAS

Senior User Experience Designer

September 2000 -
September 2005
(5 years)

UX and visual design for multiple SAS products, including Portal, BI reporting clients, and ETL clients. Technologies included HTML/CSS, Java clients, Windows clients, and Flex.