About Initial Velocity

Velocity is not just about speed. It is about speed and direction. Whether you are a new organization, launching a new initiative, reorganizing, or developing a new thing, you need both to start up. Created in January 2017, Initial Velocity is now working to help a small group of projects develop, launch, and increase their speed and clear sense of direction.

About ME

I am a driven problem-solver with experience at the intersection of nonprofit, government, and technology. Most recently I served in President Obama's White House, Office of Science and Technology Policy as the Senior Advisor for Making. In this capacity, I led initiatives including National Week of Making, Nation of Makers, the Kid Science Advisors Campaign, and supported numerous other efforts including the WH Science Fair, WH Water Summit, WH Frontiers Conference, and South by South Lawn. Through my service, I have directly interacted and actively learned from the interests, ideas, commitments, and collaborations of thousands of different individuals and organizations. My work has led to a variety collaborations, joint efforts, and collective actions by providing design thinking and strategic frameworks for new initiatives and I worked explicitly to advocate for the tech community to become more intentionally inclusive, deliberatively diverse, and strategically situated to grow the number and depth of opportunities for all.

Prior to serving President Obama in the White House, I was the Executive Director of the Digital Harbor Foundation, where I led efforts to save the closed-down South Baltimore Rec Center by reopening it as the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center, a youth-centered makerspace located in Baltimore, Maryland that provides after-school program, summer camps, field trips, family make nights, educator training workshops, and numerous other community-making opportunities. In 2017, I launched Initial Velocity to enable me to share best practices from my experiences working on the dozens of initiatives, ventures, projects, and startups I have undertaken or worked on throughout my career, to now help others launch their ideas with my added insight, skill set, understanding, and passion.