SELECT HIGHLIGHTS

Here’s a selection of writing from over the years. While I cringe now at the naïveté in some of my earlier thinking, or at how I missed blindspots that are blindingly obvious to me today, I believe these pieces provide a window into the experiences that inform my thinking and how I’ve grappled with questions of equity, accountable, and justice:

• “What Does Collectivist Art Look Like?”, In These Times, Dec 2022
  In a world that keeps breaking our hearts, what can we learn from communities who have long battled political, economic, and ecological crises? An exploration of Documenta 15’s revolutionary worldmaking, CIA cultural propaganda, multidirectional memory.

• “Grieving and Healing Through Creative Communion”, Harper’s Bazaar, May 2022
  Art can help us process the endless tragedies around us: the personal, the communal, the ancestral. it can help restore hope, our most precious resource. but what are the possibilities and politics around art that heals? Reflections on cultural justice as health justice as healing justice.

• “Sex, Death, and Empire: The Roots of Violence Against Asian Women” (Cover Story), The Nation, Apr 2022
  After the murder of Christina Yuna Lee, my group chats filled with tips on buying mace and coupons for personal alarms. But I knew that my sisters deserved more. so I set out to explore the military, cultural, and psychosocial history of violence against Asian women—and what true justice might mean.

• “‘Multiple Things Can Be True’: Understanding the Roots of Anti-Asian Violence”, The Nation, Apr 2022
  A conversation with public defender Jason Wu, who says if we do not learn from the history of white supremacist violence, we risk misdiagnosing the problems—and applying remedies that will continue to fail us.

• “In Times of Grief, Joy Fuels My Fight”, Apr 2021
  I was feeling wobbly and disoriented. My phone buzzed with vaccine selfies from friends in rich countries, devastating news from friends in the majority world, and advice on buying mace from Asian friends in the US. So I explore how to understand “pandemic as a portal” and what it’s like to nurture sacred joy while living in a state of perpetual mourning.

• “The QAnon Shaman Reminds Me of My Best Friend, and Other Musings on Saving Democracy”, Jan 2021
  In trying to make sense of the storming of the US Capitol on Jan 6, I went down a rabbit hole of trying to understand militant Trump protestors. I was startled by what I found. These are reflections on democracy, invisibility, and white men—and how we move forward across such vast and seemingly impossible divides.

• “Towards a Politics of Solidarity & Joy”, Dec 2020
  2020 was a dumpster fire of a year. But breaking down also provides opportunities to pick yourself back up, stronger and more clear-eyed than before. These are my learnings from the year: on anger & joy, power & reform, re- & decolonization, empathy & solidarity, collective struggle & embodied practice. And gratitude.

• “How to Respond to a Pandemic When Our Institutions Can’t”, Apr 2020
  In the early days of COVID, I struggled with the disparity I was seeing in response efforts between public and international agencies (who had mandates and resources to the crises) and community groups (who made up their own mandates and rallied for resources). I wrote on what powerful institutions can learn from creative organizers.

• “Strengthening Kenyan Media: Exploring a Path Towards Journalism in the Public Interest”, with Asch Harwood, Emily Herrick, Wilson Ugangu, 2018
  Deep-rooted challenges inhibit Kenyan journalists from holding their government accountable. I supervised a team and edited this report detailing these challenges, to drive conversation and investment to address barriers to independent media. This foundational work informed the creation of the Baraza Media Lab in Nairobi.

• “What Makes for Successful Open Government Co-Creation?”, 2017
  Some reflections on how to help communities, civil society, and governments work together to imagine, plan, and realize accountable governance. This piece draws on ~two years of work across five countries: Canada, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, and USA.

• “Reboot Reflects: 7 Years of Controlled Chaos & Careful Iteration”, 2017
  A short piece with highlights and lessons from seven years of Reboot, the organization I co-founded and lead. It was fun to reflect on where youthful anger and enduring curiosity can take you.

• “People-Powered Media Innovation in West Africa”, with Nonso Jideofor & Kate Reed Petty, 2016
  As media ecosystems in West Africa open after decades of state control, independent journalism has found bold new ways to hold government to account. I led a team to explore how these ecosystems were evolving, and where further investments could accelerate their impact. This informed the design of a program to support leading investigative journalists in Nigeria, supported by MacArthur Foundation and managed by Reboot.

• “Moving from Real-Time Data to Real-Time Programs”, 2016
  As someone who designs and runs programs, I know the value of timely data in identifying problems, targeting solutions, and tweaking implementation. But while many institutions are gung-ho about real-time data, most are far from making use of it. By prematurely investing in these efforts, institutions can actually undermine their own impact. Based on global ethnographic work with major US agency, I reflect on these themes.

• “Why “Design For Development” Is Failing On Its Promise”, FastCo Exist, 2015
  This piece was prompted by some reflection from work we had done in Libya, supporting the post-revolution government and UN partners in realizing the second-ever elections in over 40 years. I discuss when our efforts can do more harm than good, and how to grappled with the difficult question of where to target our efforts for change.

• “Co-Creating with Civil Society: A Glimpse into the Process”, 2015
  I love helping folks from diverse backgrounds work together. This requires them to see each other as humans, find common ground, (temporarily) suspend politics, and build solidarity around a shared vision. These are some reflections on how to do it, based on a global effort I helped architect. (And bonus: Here is a rant on how not to do it.)

• “Before the Backlash, Let’s Redefine User-Centered Design”, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2015
  Earlier in my career, I was active in the social design space. I’d long had a sense of its contradictions and limitations, but as you sometimes do when you’re head-down on work, hadn’t genuinely tried to express my discomfort with the field. This is an early—and, to my present mind, pretty green—attempt to grapple with this.

• “Implementing Innovation: A User's Manual for Open Government Programs”, with Kerry Brennan et al, 2015
  For all the talk about transparent, participatory, and accountable government, there is a dearth of practical, easy-to-use resources guiding civic innovators on how to implement these programs. Having seen many stumble, I led a team to produce this guide based on a partnership with the Office of the President in Mexico.

• “Toward the Next Phase of Open Government”, Aspen Institute, 2014
  In 2013, the Aspen Institute convened a group of leading thinkers and doers in the rapidly changing field of open government to reflect on the space, and where it needed to go. My report captured the conversations at the event, combined with my own research and analysis. As I wrote it, I was living in Libya during a tumultuous period and reading Dave Eggers’ The Circle, which made for a strange headspace to be reflecting on these ideas.

• “An Ethnographic Approach to Impact Evaluation: Stop Measuring Outputs, Start Understanding Experiences”, 2013
  This piece was in response to what the over-reliance on meaningless indicators and counting exercises in public / social program design and evaluation, and why improvements in lived human experience must be the metric by which we measure success.

• “Chatting in Code on Walkie-Talkies in Pakistan's Tribal Areas”, The Atlantic, 2013
  I wrote this piece to share with an American audience the impacts of US intervention in the tribal regions of Pakistan. Despite the official line claiming drone strikes are used solely for targeted killings of militants, many live in fear that they could be caught in the crossfire. To have an honest accounting of US foreign and military policy, we need more nuanced portraits of the impacts on innocent communities.

• “Design Research for Media Development”, Internews, 2013
  In 2012, I directed a team to understand information needs and behaviours of communities in the tribal areas of Pakistan, who’d been devastated by decades of political turmoil. The findings challenged common assumptions and changed the course of programming. Our NGO partner then commissioned this guide to train staff in contextually sensitive applied research. While my own practices have since evolved, I think this remains a fine how-to.

• “Reaching Those Beyond Big Data”, Ethnography Matters, 2013
  This is a summary of a talk I gave on human trafficking in NYC, and the heartbreaking ways that common tech platforms are used for control and oppression. This was in the early days of the big data hype cycle—which continues to manifest in obsessions with quantification, data-driven decision-making, and AI for policy—and I warn how over-reliance on data can obscure the needs of the most vulnerable.

• “Embracing Informality: Designing Financial Services for China’s Marginalized”, with Patrick Ainslie & Sarah Fathallah, 2013
  Financial inclusion—ensuring all people have equal access to quality, non-exploitative financial services—was an early passion of mine. I led a team to conduct research across China to understand the needs of migrant workers, ethnic minorities, and rural villagers, and to explore how we can design better services to meet their needs.

• “Design Research: What Is It and Why Do It?”, 2012
  I wrote a surprisingly popular post on, as the title says, what design research is and how it differs from academic and market research. While the practices originate in the private sector—where there are incentives (profit) and accountability mechanisms (shareholders) to design things people want and need—I discuss why they are especially critical in the public and social sectors, where the stakes to improve or harm lives is far greater.

• “Mobile Money: Afghanistan”, with Jan Chipchase, MIT Innovations, 2011
  In the early days of mobile money (aka mobile phone based financial services) I was inspired by its potential to serve those who’d been previously ignored by commercial banks, and to address government corruption. This work took me to many countries, including Afghanistan, to better understand the daily lives and struggles of ordinary people, and how we could design services to meet their needs.

• “Stop Blaming the Stars: The Role of Design in Disaster”, 2011
  This is a talk I gave, where the conference theme was building for the future in the wake of disasters. I reflected on “disaster”—from the Italian disastro, “ill-starred event”—and how disasters are actually not random acts of fate. They are man-made. Terrible events (such as floods or, in 2020, pandemics) and ineffective systems (such as those crippled by inequity) devolve into disasters because of bad human decisions.

• “The Messy Art of Saving the World” Series, Core77, 2011
  This is a series I wrote, with a tongue-in-cheek title, on my early explorations in applying design and innovation practices to complex issues of global development. While I now cringe at how naive and idealistic I was in my early explorations, the values I call for—a rejection of simplistic solutions, an embrace of understanding all humans (from “beneficiaries” to “elites”)—have endured in my work.