Why labels like civic technologist, movement technologist, and public interest technologist only explain part of what I do.
If someone asked me what I do, I could answer in a few different ways.
Depending on the context, I might say I am a project manager, consultant, civic technologist, movement technologist, citizen developer, strategist, or full-stack web application developer.
And none of those would be entirely wrong.
But none of them reflects the essential focus of my work: building the underlying infrastructure that enables and empowers others to act.
That is part of the problem.
What I do is not especially common. At least, not in a way that fits neatly into the labels people are most familiar with or comfortable with.
Some people may understand a civic technologist right away. Others might be more familiar with the terms public interest technologist, community technologist, or tech organizer. I have used some of those terms interchangeably, depending on the audience and the situation.
My work is about creating infrastructure that empowers action.
Sometimes that infrastructure is technical. Sometimes it is operational. Other times, it is communicative. Most of the time, it is some combination of all three.
For example, it can look like a workflow, a content system, an accessibility audit, a communication plan, a rights-based tool, a governance structure, a resource hub, or a public-facing guide.
And of those, the layer that helps move information across people, sectors, and situations is the one I know best. It is also the layer that gets overlooked all the time.
People talk a lot about strategy, policy, organizing, and technology, but they (usually) don’t discuss the conditions that help those things actually happen: hierarchical power dynamics, skill gaps, time, trust, and capacity.
However, I’m not talking about it in theory; I’m a practitioner.
For example, what helps people coordinate, access information, or understand their rights? What helps different groups communicate without creating more confusion or helps a project move from a good idea to something real, usable, and ethically sound?
Those are the kinds of questions my work tends to be built around.
Building infrastructure for action is hard to label.
That is also why I have a hard time using one label or title. After all, I do have experience in citizen development and full-stack JavaScript web application development. At the same time, I have worked as a clinical coordinator for an international medical school and built a statewide, federally funded, asynchronous telehealth program. I also co-designed a virtual home health mental health program during Covid-19 from the ground up that springboarded a supply rationing program, which ultimately scaled from a pilot to integration across the entire organization. Fast forward to today, and I am building tools to help folks understand their rights while simultaneously building a firewall to help sustain our democracy. But none of those things, by themselves, explains why I care so much about communication, accessibility, governance, and public-facing usability.
Likewise, project management is part of my background. So is systems design, communications strategy, public health implementation, and rights-based and movement-supporting work. But again, even with those examples, it shows that each title captures one piece, and our systems are designed that way. It is reductionism in action, which can change context. When context changes, it can distort reality. If you take that a step further, that simplification is technically a form of suppression, but don’t get that confused with oppression. Because oppression isn’t standalone; it’s systemic. Especially when paychecks are part of the equation. That makes me wonder if that’s why most movement-building initiatives are volunteer? I’ll save that for another post.
Onward!
A starting point: building infrastructure for action
That is why I believe explaining my function up front makes more sense: I build the infrastructure people use to act, which looks different in every setting.
For example, I helped build a multilingual, ADA-accessible, and HIPAA-compliant telehealth system to help marginalized communities access care, because they had limited healthcare options near their homes. In another project, it meant supporting public-facing tools and communication structures to help people understand and assert their rights. In another, it meant improving governance, content pathways, and accessibility so that a resource system could become clearer, more ethical, and more usable. That is also part of why governance cannot be treated like an afterthought.
That is also why I do not reduce what I do to advocacy alone. Advocacy matters. Organizing matters. Policy matters. Training matters. However, I usually work in the layer beneath all of that.
The lens by which I work.
If you read the post before this about how my work has evolved, you’ll know that I work through an applied management lens. In practice, that means I work in the “layer” between strategy and execution, where ideas themselves either become useful or fall apart, and where communication either cultivates trust or deepens confusion.
This is also where applied management still matters to me.
Applied management gave me a way to bridge real-world complexity with practical action. It also gave me a way to connect analysis with implementation, helping me understand that systems do not fail solely because people have “bad intentions” or similar nuances. Sometimes projects fail because their structures are weak in one or more parts. That is exactly the kind of burden-shifting I mean when I talk about who absorbs the risk. Sometimes, it is because the communication is poor or because no one thought carefully enough about who would actually have to use the thing once it existed. Sometimes the deeper problem is what gets tracked later and what quietly disappears.
That lens still guides me.
It is why I care about process, language, accessibility, governance, and ultimately fundamental rights. It is why what I care about also fits into my specialized role.
Does the solution match the actual problem?
Is it usable?
Can people maintain it?
Does it protect the people interacting with it or reduce confusion?
Does it help rather than complicate?
Those are the questions I care about. More specifically, I am referring to our right to privacy (and supporting the Substantive Due Process Precedents overall), data protection, encryption, and related matters.
Connecting the dots.
For me, this all comes down to using technology ethically. It baffles me that we still construct systems that stifle. Why can’t we advance democracy and simultaneously protect people from harm? Since our systems are not neutral, we must remember that the things we build can either protect dignity, improve access, and support truth, or they can compound harm, confusion, and exclusion.
Too often, it seems that people (across all sectors) jump straight to “building” before asking and understanding what is actually needed and what’s really at stake. When you “move too fast and break things,” that’s when you get surveillance dressed up as innovation (think: the jump from omnichannel analytics to surveillance pricing) or when people confuse speed and disruption with actual progress (these depositions come to mind in 2026).
Anyway, I am more interested in building traction than in making noise, and whether people can actually use, trust, and sustain something ethically, rather than creating something for a dopamine fix.
That is also why some of the more familiar labels still feel incomplete. A civic technologist gets close in some situations. A movement technologist gets close in other scenarios. A public interest technologist can also fit, depending on the audience.
Going full circle.
Because the work itself is interdisciplinary, each term/title leaves something out. What they all tend to point toward, though, is that the work is not simply technical (although more stakeholders than not get lost in translation at this point and rarely voice concerns or are just disinterested or indifferent enough to not do their due diligence and upskill, or worse, not speak up). It is more social than anything. It is also structural, involves a lot of communication, and is operational. It’s also tedious and messy. And it exists in relation to real people navigating real conditions.
Let’s move past labels/titles. We need to focus on the layered, realistic impact of building effective infrastructure for lasting change.
And importantly, this does not belong to only one field. Nor does it exist in a single bubble.
Who can help build the infrastructure for action?
From direct experience in cross-sector organizing in the face of authoritarianism, I can tell you that healthcare workers need it. Educators need it. Nonprofits need it. Organizers need it. Community networks need it. People interacting with public systems need it too.
That is why this work, building infrastructure for action, matters more to me now than ever.
A lot of people know something is wrong. We can feel it. But many still do not know where they fit or how they can help. Or what the feeling is (it’s creeping authoritarianism). At the same time, some people want to assist but feel overwhelmed by complexity or afraid of saying the wrong thing.
Where do we go from here?
Many professionals do not yet realize that their current skills can support and directly impact rights-based work without them needing to become an “activist” or an entirely different person. I wrote more about that in How to Defend Rights from Where You Are. Not because I have all the answers, but because I’ve worked with lawyers, clinicians, organizers, and educators, and understand that cross-sector connections matter. People need structures that help them move, and they need information they can actually use. We also need systems that are clearer, more ethical, and more accessible. Mainly, my work helps to facilitate these gaps.
That is how I think about my role, which has only evolved out of curiosity, persistence, and missteps, and continues to do so; things are getting clearer.
In closing, when I use a term like civic technologist or movement technologist, I am trying to get closer to the truth. The truth is simpler than labels: I build infrastructure that people use to take action.