I'm a researcher, software engineer, and community organizer working at the intersection of technology and civic renewal. With over 20 years of software development experience, including enterprise-level product and systems work, I now apply that technical depth to some of the most pressing challenges facing democratic society.

I am currently in a critical bridge period because I have submitted grant applications to fund my work and the decisions are expected within the next 2-3 months. In the meantime, I am running out of cash and I need support to cover basic living expenses so I can continue this critical work to save our democracy without interruption.

I am currently advancing two complementary prosocial tech initiatives. The first, Civic Intelligence Infrastructure (CII), is a platform being developed for Mediators Foundation and Better Together America. CII is designed to help community organizations, civic networks, and funders coordinate their efforts more effectively using ethically-harnessed AI to support democratic resilience, community governance, and mutual aid at scale. Think of it as shared data infrastructure for the civic sector: the kind of behind-the-scenes connective tissue that lets thousands of local initiatives work in concert rather than in isolation.

The second, OpenHaven, maps the landscape of decentralized and peer-to-peer technologies to prosocial use cases, helping civic technologists and community builders identify which tools are best suited to their values and goals. OpenHaven is also being designed as a gateway for AI-assisted development, enabling civic technologists to move directly from identifying the right tools to building new applications on decentralized and peer-to-peer foundations. Prototype available at https://openhaven.net/

Alongside this work, I am completing a master's degree at the California Institute for Human Science in wisdom design, which is a field that draws on integrative theory, social science, and philosophy to address systemic challenges. I co-authored the white paper Mapping an Ecology of Integrative Approaches to Addressing the Metacrisis with the Institute of Applied Metatheory, have presented at multiple academic conferences, appeared on numerous podcasts, and for 13 years have facilitated the Sacramento Politics & Philosophy meetup — one of the most active civic dialogue communities in the region. More about my work can be found at https://civicenlightenment.org

These initiatives are not parallel projects but interlocking pieces of a unified strategy. CII is a prerequisite for the kind of empirical research I am conducting for my thesis — gathering real-world data on how civic networks coordinate, where they break down, and what interventions actually work. OpenHaven, meanwhile, addresses a growing urgency: as authoritarian pressure on civil society organizations intensifies around the world, local community hubs need decentralized tools that allow citizens to organize without vulnerability to surveillance or shutdown. Together, these efforts represent a coherent and actionable response to the greatest challenges of our time, which we can see as the interconnected breakdown of democratic institutions, social trust, and collective sensemaking that defines this historical moment.

Your contribution — at any level — helps keep this work alive during a pivotal moment. Every dollar goes directly toward basic living expenses: mortgage, transportation, and the ability to keep showing up fully for this work every day. If sustainable funding comes through sooner than expected, any surplus will go directly into the projects themselves.