Portfolio
Below are some examples of my empathetic approach to designing human-centered research projects. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.
Carbon Health: Marketing Launches
with Health System Partnerships
Led the design thinking, creation, and execution of partner marketing launches and engagement for Carbon Health, which partnered with national health system such as Stanford Medical Center, John Muir Health, and Prime Healthcare.
Managed marketing tactics across all channels including print assets, digital advertising, email drip campaigns, employee engagement campaigns, internal communications, and clinic signage.
Virta Health: Reversing Type 2 Diabetes
Created Patient Marketing Catalogue to more effectively collaborate with enterprise and health plans partners to identify marketing strategies, align on KPIs, and implement nationwide launches.
Catalogue comprises of samples of emails, digital ads, mailers, flyers, posters, biometric screening handouts, screen holders, and healthcare provider referral guide.
Formation: Rebranding a Machine Learning Platform
Oversaw the rebranding of formation.ai (formally known as Takt).
Created and edited new content for Formation's website. Co-wrote the press release and newsletter, which introduced the Customer Goal Management Platform (CGM) to the Machine Learning industry.
Peru: Diet, Urbanization, and the Rise of Noncommunicable Diseases
Designed, proposed, and secured funding for research project: How have dietary changes in Trujillo, Peru contributed to the rise of noncommunicable diseases in Trujillo?
Traveled in Peru for 15 weeks to build relationships with local communities to better understand the food landscape and conduct qualitative interviews in Spanish.
Instacart: Making an Accessible Mobile and Online Platform
Championed accessible product development for special needs customers.
I conducted needs based research by interacting with 120 users per day. In my research, I discovered the need to design an interface that would allow special needs customers to use the Instacart app and website. I collaborated with engineering, operations, and legal teams, to create an interface that allowed these customers to begin using the service.
Click here to read more about Instacart's commitment to making its electronic and information technologies accessible.
Oakland Unified School District: Creating a Toolkit for Healthier School Fundraisers
Co-authored and published guidelines to implement fundraising programs that promote wellness and form healthy eating habits in Oakland's public schools.
Conducted literature review and wrote section on "The Oakland Unified School District Population" in the Summary Statement. Additional sections I designed and wrote include the description of staffing, the budget and budget justification, the goals, and the SMART objectives. Researched and identified potential funders to send our Letter of Intent to fund our program.
World Health Organization: United Nations City in Copenhagen
1. Co-authored the WHO Regional Office for Europe’s 2018 guide to Planning healthy and sustainable meetings. Principle author on the introduction; snacks, meals and beverages; and physical activity chapters.
2. Represented the Division of Noncommunicable Diseases and Life-Course at the International Childhood Obesity Conference in Lisbon, Portugal as a communications and scientific writing expert. Published article on the 3-day conference in the WHO’s internal news channels.
Give Your Gap: Designing a Portal to Profile Credible 501(c)3 Orgs to Volunteer at During a Gap Year
Co-founder and Creative Director of GiveYourGap, an online portal designed to help young adults identify volunteer opportunities during their gap year. Traveled to 12 countries in Asia to develop content for the portal using different mediums including videography, photography, and short essays.
GYG was acquired in 2015 by The NGS movement, who also adopted the content.
View GYG video here.
Nutritional Epidemiology: Using STATA to Look at the Correlation Between 2 Variables From NHANES Survey
Used STATA to quantitatively look at the relationship between the perception of dietary practices and dietary behaviors in an average sample of the US adult population. Past research has found that even considerable knowledge of healthy eating habits does not always translate into healthy food choices, but no study to date had looked at the association between these two variables.
UC San Francisco & the Blum Center for Developing Economies @ UC Berkeley: Keynote Speaker - "Documenting Your Global Health Work"
Delivered 50 minute lecture on documenting global health projects, with an emphasis on how to demonstrate cultural sensitivity, ask subjects for permission, and be aware of ethical and safety issues. The presentation drew from my own experience as a photojournalist on both domestic and international projects.
UC San Francisco: Using Empathy to Improve Treatment for Adolescents with Eating Disorders
Discovered gap in literature and hypothesized a new and empathetic way of improving the current standard of care for adolescents suffering from severe eating disorders. I designed a randomized controlled trial and wrote a NIH R21 grant on behalf of UC San Francisco to apply for funding.
Oprah Winfrey’s Documentary Series “Belief”: A Grief-Stricken Father and Daughter Search for Peace
Part of Oprah's seven-night event, Belief, "a groundbreaking television event exploring humankind's ongoing search to connect with something greater than ourselves". My father and I traveled with Harpo's production crew for one week to create Episode 4: "A Change is Gonna Come". Promoted the series with Oprah as a guest on the Dr. Phil show. Featured on Tim McGraw's music video "Humble and Kind".
UC Berkeley: Designing a Case Study to Teach Undergraduates Participatory Approaches to Poverty Alleviation
Led 19 undergraduates in 2 weekly discussion sections for a course called “Global Poverty and Practice” and designed a case study to build student knowledge of poverty alleviation policies, programs, and social movements by using different levels of participatory approaches. *The pdf shows the student produced responses from the class exercise on pages 3-7.
The Food Bank of Santa Barbara County (SBC) Food Bank: Designing an Impact Evaluation for a Program Called ‘Healthy Eating for Diabetes’.
Designed and published an evaluation to understand the impact of the Healthy Eating for Diabetes program on Type II Diabetes (T2DM) outcomes among food insecure clients at the Food bank of SBC. Components of the impact evaluation that I take ownership of include designing the evaluation question, causal chain, and Gantt Chart.
UC Berkeley: Visualizing the Student Essay
As a graduate Student Instructor for a course called “Global Poverty and Practice”, I taught scholarly approaches to understanding poverty, wealth, and inequality in historical and global contexts. The final project of the semester was to conduct secondary research on the region and sector of the student's own "practice experience", i.e. an organization focused on some aspect of poverty and inequality alleviation that they would volunteer at.
For all of the undergraduates in this course, this was their first time synthesizing an annotated bibliography and literature review. Recognizing that the students struggled with understanding how to structure their final literature review, I transformed this abstract idea into a structure by creating a diagram, that would allow the students to "visualize" the flow of their written essay.
UC Berkeley: A Critical Look at Oxfam's Food Insecurity and Poverty Alleviation Program
Oxfam is an international confederation whose mission is to work with local partners and local communities to design program interventions to alleviate poverty in developing countries. This report is a critical review of Oxfam's intervention in Nepal, and proposes new solutions on how to combat food insecurity change within the context of the pervasive caste system in Nepal.
Center of Latin American Studies @ UC Berkeley: Presenter at Research Symposium
Designed and delivered a 20 minute presentation to 100(+) academics at UC Berkeley as a Tinker Grant recipient. My presentation, “Dietary Changes, Non-Communicable Diseases, and Policy Implications in Trujillo, Peru", showcased my photos and research findings from my 15 week qualitative research project in Peru.
UC Berkeley: A Policy Brief on Childhood Obesity in Richmond, California
Created a policy brief that provides a brief analysis on the childhood obesity epidemic in Richmond, California. It discusses challenges to eradicating childhood obesity, and lists a 3-fold action plan to improving health outcomes for children in the Richmond community.
UC Berkeley: Poster on Leptospirosis Control and Surveillance in the Slums of Jakarta, Indonesia
Leptospirosis is a bacteria disease of humans and animals that is found worldwide, but most commonly seen in urban slums. This is due to inadequate sewage disposal and water treatment, which allows the deadly bacteria to spread rapidly. This poster, presented to a panel of Masters in Development Practice professors and graduate students, showcased a new intervention to control the spread of this fatal infection in the slums of Jakarta.
Components of this poster that I take ownership of include designing the community outreach programs and the 5-year program budget.