RESULTS
Below are case studies from a selection of projects:
Creating A Roadmap for Equity-Based System Change
Supporting Adult English Learners to Access Language Instruction
Helping the Gulf Coast Rebuild
Assisting Philanthropy to Support Disaster Recovery
Building Community Capacity for Social Change
Helping Community Financing Benefit Under-Invested Neighborhoods
Pursuing Funding to Improve Community Health
Expanding Advocacy for Vulnerable Women and Families
Evaluating Barriers to Fair Housing in Seattle
Creating Culturally-Relevant Strategies for Seattle's Little Saigon
and International District
CREATING A ROADMAP FOR EQUITY-BASED SYSTEM CHANGE
The Context
In 2019, the Port of Seattle established its first Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (OEDI), charged with ensuring that equity principles are integrated throughout Port operations, strategies and policies. As a new office, one of the first tasks of the new Senior Director was to create a Strategic Plan for the office and its equity work.
Services Provided
Since summer 2019, I have worked with OEDI leadership to develop a Strategic Plan and support initial implementation of it. My services included reviewing previous equity-related work at the Port as a starting point for the plan, developing strategies and associated objectives and key results, researching best practices and external resources to inform strategy development, revising the plan informed by feedback from internal and external stakeholders who reviewed it, and supporting OEDI leadership to finalize the Plan to bring to Port Commission for formal approval.
In a “build the plane and fly it at the same time” approach, I also assisted with early implementation steps connected to the Plan, including helping to map out staffing structure and roles within OEDI, supporting an internal survey to identify employee perspectives on equity, reviewing drafts of communication materials to be used in early discussions about equity internally, and conducting national research on equity and workforce development to inform internal work.
I have also provided ongoing strategic analysis and advising on various emerging issues and policies that required review and analysis using an equity lens. These included Port public art policies, community development funding, workforce development, and agency-wide planning and goal setting efforts.
Results
The OEDI Strategic Plan has been completed, and is due for Port Commission review for approval in February 2020. OEDI has been staffing up and is on the way to being fully staffed in early 2020. Initial activities to begin equity dialog internally are underway. Various responsive strategic advising work has been completed, with additional ongoing work in the pipeline.
Spotlighting Voices of Marginalized Communities in Early Childhood Development Across Washington State
The Context
In 2019, the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) undertook a statewide early learning needs assessment to identify gaps and services for children and families across Washington state. The assessment included gathering qualitative data through outreach to parents, caregivers, providers and other professionals who shared perspectives about early learning. The outreach included over 120 in-person meetings and an online survey, and reached over 2,100 participants.
Services Provided
I provided overall analysis of the qualitative data, which included review of over 3,500 pages of raw data. Primary tasks included coding and coordinating partners to share coding of raw data into a qualitative data analysis software, reviewing comments by codes and analyzing code counts to identify prevalent issues, analyzing and synthesizing inter-related codes to surface broader themes, integrating sub-analyses from multiple data sources into a unified master document, organizing issues and themes to align with a pre-existing Strategic Planning Framework, and writing up a report of the findings, along with a Summary of the Process, Summary of Who Was Reached, and Recommendations for Process Improvements.
The work also included a deeper dive analysis of input from communities of color, including conducting a disparities analysis. I especially conducted this analysis with an equity lens, and produced a companion report.
Results
As of January 2019, all draft reports are under review by DCYF.
supporting adult english learners to access language instruction
The Context
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as part of a Special Initiative, recognized the importance of English proficiency as a cornerstone of educational persistence and success. For many refugees and immigrants, low levels of English fluency are a formidable barrier not only to education, but in turn, to their ability to secure jobs, ensure economic stability, and provide for themselves and their families. At the same time, the demand far outstrips the capacity of public community and technical colleges, the largest channel for providing English language instruction, to meet it.
Services Provided
Since early 2012, I have supported the foundation’s efforts to develop and invest in models that can expand access to English language instruction for adult learners, particularly models that make use of technology to create access in ways that are more effective, more easily accessible, and can be provided at lower cost. My services included reviewing and supplementing research on the landscape of relevant existing providers, helping to develop a portfolio strategy, identifying potential grantees, working with them and foundation staff to develop grants, and supporting project work.
Results
The foundation has invested $6 million in several pilot efforts, some of which have been completed and some of which are still active. Along the way, lessons about what worked and what didn’t have been collected to help strengthen existing work and expand knowledge in the field.
HELPING THE GULF COAST REBUILD
The Context
Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, especially the region’s most vulnerable: the elderly, economically poor, minorities, and other marginalized residents. Many people faced high barriers to recovery. Citizen influence in government decisions lacked precedent, and a dearth of grassroots organizations prior to the hurricane was all but decimated after the event. Together, these challenges created a dire need for communities to build strength and skills from within to guide and sustain their rebuilding.
Services Provided
Initially, I took a four-month hiatus from consulting in Seattle to support recovery efforts in the region. During this time, I coordinated a regional team of bicultural young leaders sponsored by the National Alliance of Vietnamese Service Agencies, who supported rebuilding through case management and grassroots organizing. I also worked closely with the Vietnamese community in New Orleans East, supporting initial relief and eventually longer-term rebuilding efforts. Once the community formed its first community development non-profit, the Mary Queen of Vietnam CDC, I assisted with Board and staff development, strategic planning, technical assistance, and an economic development workshop.
Results
Mary Queen of Vietnam CDC has become a powerhouse for its community’s rebuilding efforts. Since its inception, the organization has started a charter school, built a community health clinic, helped neighborhood businesses return and re-open, and voiced its communities’ needs in citywide and regional planning efforts. It has organized residents in creating a farmers cooperative that supplies the city’s restaurants and provides income for community elders. The staff grow ever stronger in their skills and effectiveness, and continue the work with capacity and a clear roadmap for the years ahead.
ASSISTING PHILANTHROPY TO SUPPORT DISASTER RECOVERY
The Context
After Hurricane Katrina, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided immediate financial support for emergency relief; it later invested in rebuilding libraries and schools. But foundation leaders wished to do more. In a landscape of myriad needs and devastation on an unprecedented scale, they began to consider where best to focus and what interventions could create the most impact.
Services Provided
The foundation engaged me to develop grant strategies to support Gulf Coast recovery. Over the 4+ years of this assignment, my roles included assessing initial needs and the landscape, identifying and conducting due diligence of potential grantees, working with prospective grantees, supporting grants management, and assisting in evaluation of the portfolio.
Results
Three years after the hurricane, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had committed over $56 million to support recovery in the Gulf Coast. These funds helped rebuild schools and libraries, created affordable housing for those needing it most, invigorated government agencies’ abilities to lead the recovery, enabled grassroots organizations to return and help their communities come back, and ushered in a bigger and stronger constituency of engaged citizens.
BUILDING COMMUNITY CAPACITY FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
The Context
Established in 1978, the Vietnamese Friendship Association (VFA) is a Seattle-based, non-profit organization that provided resettlement services to help Vietnamese refugees arriving in the United States after the Vietnam War. Today, VFA assists underserved families through mentoring, parent advocacy, tutoring, summer and after-school programs, and cultural bridging programs.
Services Provided
In 2009, VFA launched the CARE project, a 3-phase effort for long-term community improvement. The first phase featured a community needs analysis using an intergenerational participatory research model. I provided ongoing technical assistance to project leaders on overall strategy and to the project’s youth team on how to conduct community research and analyze results. In phase 2, I provided training and technical assistance on community planning. In 2011, I also facilitated an organization-wide strategic planning process.
Results
Over the course of the project, team members learned how to conduct 85 informant interviews, organize 16 focus groups, and collect over 300 surveys. Members analyzed and synthesized data, culminating in the first-ever comprehensive report detailing the needs and hopes of Seattle’s Vietnamese community. VFA used the information gathered and skills gained to complete a long-term community plan in collaboration with community stakeholders.
HELPING COMMUNITY FINANCING BENEFIT UNDER-INVESTED NEIGHBORHOODS
The Context
The Rainier Valley Community Development Fund is a community-based financial institution formed to help small businesses affected by light rail construction in Seattle’s Rainier Valley, and to invest in long-term community development that benefits the area’s residents, businesses and neighborhoods. This second purpose, carried out via the Fund’s Community Development Program, was conceived as a revolving fund intended to be self-sustaining after the public funds capitalizing it expire.
Services Provided
Partnering with consulting firm Cedar River Group, I initially supported the Fund to develop an operating plan amendment to govern the Community Development Program. The services included research on community needs, the lending environment and peer organizations, identification of strategic opportunities, and drafting and finalizing the plan. In 2011, I facilitated a strategic planning process for the Fund’s next five years and provided follow on research on potential funding and partnership opportunities to help lay the groundwork for implementation of the plan.
Results
The operating plan has guided operations of the program since its adoption in 2005. Over those years, the Fund has made $30 million in grants and loans for local businesses and community development.
PURSUING FUNDING TO IMPROVE COMMUNITY HEALTH
The Context
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 appropriated $787 billion to stimulate the nation’s economy. Within this, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services offered funding to encourage active, healthier communities and to continue tobacco cessation efforts across the country. Public Health - Seattle & King County, with its longstanding anti-tobacco efforts and burgeoning healthy community work, was highly interested in securing these funds.
Services Provided
Teaming up with consulting firm Cedar River Group, I worked closely with a large team of Public Health leadership and staff to develop two grant proposals. Initial tasks included researching and producing issue papers to inform development of the project strategy and helping to craft the grant “storyline.” Later tasks involved synthesizing data and information from multiple agency divisions, knitting into a cohesive grant narrative and helping pull together technical appendices. Since then, I have continued to provide grant writing services to the department on a number of federal opportunities, including Community Transformation Grants, Healthcare Innovation Challenge, Nurse Workforce Development, Connecting Kids to Healthcare Coverage, and a Washington State grant to support Healthcare Navigator Services.
Results
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services selected both Public Health proposals for funding. The grants total over $25 million, one of the largest awards in the nation. Within months of the grants, Public Health launched a countywide sub-granting process that would fund dozens of non-profits and local government agencies to carry out healthy community projects in their own areas. Other successful grant applications included Community Transformation Grants ($3.6M, 2012) and Washington State Healthcare Navigator Program ($1.6M, 2013).
EXPANDING ADVOCACY FOR VULNERABLE WOMEN AND FAMILIES
The Context
The YWCA of Seattle-King-Snohomish County has a 100+ year history serving women and families in the region with comprehensive social services and housing. The YWCA recognized a critical need for systemic policy reform and sustained funding to support vulnerable families. And it realized that achieving these things requires a critical mass of citizens to engage in advocacy for such reforms.
Services Provided
The YWCA asked me to work with organizational leaders to develop a strategy that would expand and deepen community engagement in public policy advocacy. I conducted research to understand what other organizations were doing in this space, how the other ten YWCAs in Washington might join together in a statewide effort, and what outreach and communication tactics would be most effective for different audiences. We used this information to flesh out a detailed concept and implementation plan and developed a grant proposal to carry out the project.
Results
The YWCA received a $250,000 foundation grant, which enabled the project to launch in spring 2011.
EVALUATing BARRIERS TO FAIR HOUSING IN SEATTLE
The Context
Every four years, local jurisdictions that receive federal dollars for affordable housing must complete an assessment of barriers to fair housing for historically disadvantaged populations. In 2008, the Seattle Office of Housing sought an assessment that would add special analysis of the mortgage crisis occurring at that time and highlight its implications for the populations protected under fair housing law.
Services Provided
Working with the Office of Housing, Seattle’s Office for Civil Rights, the Seattle Human Services Department, and the Seattle Housing Authority, I crafted a methodology tailored to those special goals. The work included analysis of data on demographics, fair housing complaints, rental and ownership housing markets, subsidized housing, and mortgage crisis and predatory lending data.
Results
The analysis resulted in a comprehensive report with specific recommendations on how barriers could be reduced and fair housing furthered for communities traditionally at a disadvantage for access to fair housing.
CREATing CULTURALLY-RELEVANT STRATEGIES FOR SEATTLE’S LITTLE SAIGON AND INTERNATIONAL DISTRICT
The Context
Seattle’s International District and Little Saigon are both ethnically diverse neighborhoods that historically serve as incubators for many local immigrant-owned businesses and community based non-profits. Both neighborhoods also experience challenges - real and perceived crime and public safety problems, deteriorated physical infrastructure, decline in business activity, and the potential for gentrification.
Services Provided
I have supported these neighborhoods for nearly 15 years, both early in my career as a community planner and over the years as a volunteer with various non-profits. As a consultant, I worked with neighborhood activists on two recent projects serving the community. One, sponsored by the Seattle Department of Planning and Development, was a comprehensive economic impact study of potential zoning changes and a proposed major development nearby. My role included interviewing business and property owners, many bilingually, to understand their needs and goals, and researching experiences and best practices in other Asian business districts across the country. The other project, led by the Seattle Office of Economic Development, assessed neighborhood needs and capacity for small business technical assistance. I interviewed non-profits working in the neighborhood and across the city that provided such or similar services, evaluated each for their ability to provide services in these neighborhoods, and proposed a model.
Results
Both city departments have moved forward and continue to work with community stakeholders to implement strategies and recommendations.
ENSURING culturally-relevant GUIDELINES FOR EARLY CHILD DEVELOPMENT ARE RELEVANT FOR PARENTS AND DIVERSE COMMUNITIES
The Context
The Washington State Early Learning Benchmarks, crafted in 2005, have supported healthy early child growth and development. Used by parents, childcare providers and schools and others, they are updated every five years. In late 2010, lead agency Washington State Department of Early Learning, along with core partners Thrive by Five Washington and the State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction led efforts to ensure the Guidelines are accessible and relevant particularly for parents and diverse communities.
Services Provided
Joining consultant team Cedar River Group, I worked with the project Steering Committee to develop a strategy for and coordinate implementation of three rounds of public outreach. A priority was to secure advice from across the state that was meaningful and represented diverse geographies, constituencies and communities. My role included drafting and finalizing the outreach plan; developing outreach materials; organizing an orientation session for outreach volunteers; creating infrastructure to collect incoming comments; tracking and analyzing characteristics of respondents in real time; and helping to synthesize comments.
Results
The first two rounds of outreach resulted in comments from 457 individuals and an additional twelve sets of comments from organizations. Comments came from across Washington and represented diverse communities and interest groups including refugee and immigrant families, rural areas, low-income families, migrant families, parents and kinship caregivers, pediatricians, government agencies, non-profits, advocates, childcare providers, libraries and schools. All input was carefully considered and used to shape the new Guidelines, which were completed in early 2012.