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Grants, Gigs, and Good Neighbors

This week’s Queen City Resiliency Salon gathering was one of those meetings where you can feel things starting to connect. We talked grants. We talked gigs. We talked gardens, high tunnels, repair cafes, mesh radios, volunteering, mutual aid, local businesses, and the strange but exciting possibility that maybe, just

A Summer of Building Community Infrastructure

This summer is shaping up to be a big one for Queen City Resiliency Salon here in Staunton! Over the past few months, we’ve watched a small experimental project grow into something much larger: neighbors helping neighbors learn communications technology, repair household items, coordinate mutual aid, and imagine what

We Fixed Stuff (and It Was Awesome): The Staunton Repair Café Debut

We recently held the soft launch of our very first Repair Café and it was a huge success! For those who are new to the concept, a Repair Café is a community gathering where people bring broken or worn items and work alongside volunteer fixers to repair them, for free.

Learning from Experience, Building Together

At our most recent Queen City Resiliency Salon, we had the opportunity to connect with people who are actively doing the kind of community-building work we’re aspiring toward and it was both grounding and energizing. One of the highlights of the evening was a conversation with Stephanie Blackton, the

Meshtastic!

We Turned on Some Meshtastic Nodes… and the Network Noticed 😄 So, in what can best be described as the blind leading the blind (but enthusiastically), we recently dove into Meshtastic as a group of beginners. Luckily, we had a friend who actually knows what he’s doing come down and

I feel what's to happen, all happened before

The essay below became the basis for a live community conversation, recorded at the Staunton Public Library in January 2026 at the third meeting of the Queen City Resiliency Salon. Here I am providing the video from that presentation, as well as the slides. QCSS - 3rd meeting slidesQCSS -

A Local Economy That Works, Even When Things Get Weird

At our second Queen City Resiliency Salon I gave a short presentation on the current economic moment: why growth is slowing, jobs feel less secure, and prices continue to rise. When I say the dollar is “devaluing,” I’m not referring to a formal foreign-exchange devaluation; I mean a sustained

Robert Becker's The Body Electric

I've written a chapter-by-chapter summary of Robert Becker's The Body Electric, which you can read below, or listen to me read it to you. 📄 Prefer to read offline? Download the PDF here . Your browser does not support the video tag. Here I will create an extensive

Presentation: GFOA 119th Annual Conference

These slides accompanied my presentation at the 2025 GFOA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., where I shared findings from my research on transparency and public records demand in local government finance. The study, which won the inaugural GovFi Prize and was recently published in the Public Finance Journal, analyzes

What Does the Public Really Want to Know About Public Finance?

Exciting News! 🎉 I’m thrilled to share that my research has been recognized with the GFOA’s GovFi Prize for Best of Submission in governmental finance research! This journey has been an incredible learning experience, and I’m so honored to have my first peer-reviewed publication as the lead researcher.

Writing Sample: Can the Asia-Pacific tourism industry recover after COVID-19

Note: This article was originally authored by me during my tenure at IHS Markit in October 2021 and is shared here for portfolio and illustrative purposes only. The content reflects my professional contributions at the time of publication. All proprietary data or client-sensitive details have been removed or anonymized to

Writing Sample: Asia-Pacific workers’ remittances exceed expectations amid the COVID-19 pandemic

Note: This article was originally authored by me during my tenure at IHS Markit in November 2021 and is shared here for portfolio and illustrative purposes only. The content reflects my professional contributions at the time of publication. All proprietary data or client-sensitive details have been removed or anonymized to