Becca Portman
I start with how people actually work, then design and build what makes it easier. Sometimes that's a database or a website. Sometimes it's a better process and no new technology at all.
These days I build AI-enabled products for grantmakers at the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. Before that I spent seven years at the Brookings Institution, working across research, communications and impact measurement. In every role, I kept getting pulled toward the same question: how data and technology could help an organization understand its own work. I followed it from spreadsheets to databases to institution-wide strategy.
I'm fascinated by a lot of things, from local community and remote work to habits and neurodivergence, and I'm using this site to collect resources on each of them and maybe even some writing of my own.
If you're working on something that touches any of this, or you're just interested in the same things, I'd love to hear from you.