Leveraging my design strategy acumen, I began consulting at Booz Allen Hamilton. Concurrently, I started a Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership program at Pepperdine University. The former provided an opportunity to serve the United States by examining and strategically improving how stakeholders engage with facets of the federal government. The latter reframed my problem-solving toolbox into a robust scholar-practitioner mindset.
For one client with Booz Allen Hamilton, I worked within a User Researcher capacity to improve government experience strategy with US veterans. Human-centered experience frameworks were embraced as we conducted qualitative research through secondary exploration and primary research, such as interviews with veterans and other actors in benefits administration. In conducting analysis on that data, the team uncovered process and people insights. Doing so enabled the team to better understand how veterans engage with and perceive the agency. From this empathy-driven understanding, we would define the problem, ideate solutions, and prototype opportunities for improving how those experiences happen.
Another client with Booz Allen Hamilton saw the intersection of my innovation skills and healthcare background come together to help stand up a new federal agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. With a focus on the customer, I contributed toward establishing best practices for the technology transfer of new solutions for the US health market. Driven by the notion of sustainable lean innovation, the team prioritized comprehensively understanding the problem that you’re trying to solve. Rather than focusing on a solution, the ideas that survive and thrive are those that are human-centered.
During my academic program courses for the Doctor of Education, I took a deep dive into the theoretical spaces across organizational change, leadership theory, and the conduct of rigorous qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Doing so enabled me to not only better understand academic research best practices, but also to embrace the wealth of established literature and theoretical frameworks. With the tools of those resources, I was better able to examine and understand my journey and context through ideas of metanarratives, cultural hegemony, and ethical leadership.
The result of these experiences saw a comprehensive shift in my problem-solving approach to best intersect the multitude of research-driven insights with action-driven solutions.
