CV

I help public institutions build the relationships, capabilities and conditions to respond to the increasing complexity in human lives.

I am an anthropologist, public sector innovator and institutional futures strategist. For over twenty years, I have worked across universities, governments, research councils, social innovation labs and non-profit organizations in Europe, Middle-East, the Americas and Asia to create societal and institutional conditions for change. Within, I’ve been exploring one enduring question:

Why do humans do the things they do?

That question has taken me from studying social exclusion in Bolivia and community development in Guatemala and India, to leading transformation work for think-tank Kennisland in Amsterdam, and within the British Columbia Public Service and Fraser Health Authority in Canada, to advising government in Dubai.

Today, I help governments rethink how they organize themselves to deliver connected public services that better reflect the complex realities of people’s lives. My work focuses on designing the conditions that make better public services possible. This includes developing operating models, discovery methods, design capability, research infrastructure, cross-government networks, and new ways of thinking about public institutions.

Additionally, I identify emerging areas of inquiry and recognise gaps in how they are understood. I develop original concepts, typologies and frameworks to articulate those gaps, and I use research, experimentation and collective inquiry to develop those concepts into something other people can engage with and build upon. For example, I enjoy bringing together unlikely coalitions of policymakers, technologists, designers, researchers and frontline practitioners to make sense of complex problems and create shared learning and directions for change—what Indy Johar (Dark Matter Labs) aptly describes as the boring revolution of public institutions.

Recent work includes designing British Columbia’s  life and business events towards 2030 roadmap for Cabinet, developing the Playbook and Discovery model for Life Events in Connected Services BC, establishing cross-government design capability through the Design Leader Network and enterprise design infrastructure, and introducing new concepts such as relational service design, administrative truth and service orchestration into public sector transformation. I also lead systemic design research across life-events with a team of designers, policy and business analysists.

Alongside my government work, I write, speak and advise internationally on public sector transformation, public service design and connected services. I am an international Fellow with States of Change and part of trusted networks such as the Future of Labs. My recent work includes an academic book chapter on relational public service design, collaborations with the School of Good Services (UK), the Executive Council of Dubai, and Nordic Baltic Design. Last, I kick-started a collective of “Ministers” for the fictive “Ministry of Unbounded Affairs”, which sprouted a 10-part blog series (that really should have been a book).