Housing Development Strategies

Housing Requires Three Pillars:

1. Sweat equity from the people who live there
2. Market willingness to build diverse housing types
3. Regulatory guides in line with demand

This 4 minute example video presentation completed for a nonprofit housing program showcases research, graphic design, and presentation skills.

Small Homes

This urban development proved that there is high demand for missing middle housing. The lightweight website made a huge splash by marketing a neighborhood life many want to live while unsaddled by large debts earning average regional incomes.

Example PDF slides for a program that self-funded with private donations to place people into temporary housing and connect them with long-term case planning resources. This program evolved into the current Our Place shelter as RISE was selected to partner with Washoe County.

With the same group, we also created a small scale engagement project to educate communities sweat equity, land stewardship, and place making pride.

Public Private Partnerships with Small Businesses

The Reno Sparks Neighborhoods website promotes community engagement and place making. From reinvigorating the neighborhood advisory boards, to promoting events, to raising funds and community education on gardens, this long standing platform organizes neighborhood specific data, elevates local experts, and collects analytics on neighborhood engagement.

Utilizing 1,200 public data neighborhood spreadsheets, complex regional questions can be tested to find new opportunities to improve every area of life.

The main benefit of the site is the use of advanced content management to quickly sort and share organized information with the public.

Public Project Empowered by Reno Sparks Neighborhoods

Reno, Sparks, and Washoe county did not have one shared database for their parks. Reno hosted a data day to get their data public and this inspired volunteers to analyze and standardize County and City of Sparks data. The integrated regional public data was then used by bicycle advocates, county health officials, and the Parks Foundation to celebrate our park resources. Truckee Meadows Park Foundation had a WIX website which had the ability to create individual park websites from one spreadsheet. This continues to allow them to maintain hundreds of webpages with minimal staff training. For the community engagement, we set up ways for people to submit historic park accounts and pictures so the staff had content to work with and share publicly.

Supporting passionate community members to work alongside governmental departments improved the healthiness and pride in our public spaces.

Education and Historic Building Reuse

In many situations, organizations never update their website so a simple, phone friendly, fast loading HTML page is the best option. These take less than a day to set up and are still easy for a web team to update.

The Evans Park Place Making effort brought small businesses and governments together. The final outcome looked different than this proposal as some of the homes were relocated and saved. The website stands as an example of what historic communities could pursue to thrive, maintain their history, and host locals and tourists for everyone’s benefit.

Social Determinants of Health (SDOH)

This project involved a complex mix of technical tools to facilitate statewide data collection, train hundreds of students per quarter with a 40-hour state-developed curriculum, and secure diverse grants across medical settings, community staffing, and addressing social determinants of health.

A custom Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and user-friendly Learning Management System (LMS) served as the technical foundation of this initiative, featuring clean, visually appealing graphics and a well-designed website. The in-house technical development ensured that barriers could be addressed promptly for both students and grantors from federal, state, and private agencies. Advanced data processing tools enabled the generation of demographic, population, and service reports in real time based on specific time periods and search terms.

Data analysis revealed disparities in graduation rates. African American women had the highest graduation rate while rural students with lower education levels faced the greatest barriers to completing the course. By identifying these trends, the team could celebrate the outcomes of the most successful students and focus targeted interventions on those struggling to meet state education requirements.

The extensive capacity building effort led to millions of dollars in funding for staff in front line public health work positions across the state and built a foundation for sustainable community healthwork into the future.

Government Engagement & Policy

Public Health Care Expansion

These short presentations were the culmination of years of listening, researching, and reflecting to empower Nevada to utilize federal programs and meet Nevada’s higher standards. My role was to quickly present the history and recommendations to elected officials and answer questions before the unanimous bipartisan support votes were held. I was honored to build on past work, address concerns, and present for people who had been in the health trenches working with underserved urban and rural communities for years.

• SB 117: 2023, Feb 21 and April 28 presentations
• AB 191: 2021, Mar 8 and May 25 presentations

Public Safety and Capacity

The physical printed and bound Washoe Fire booklet and companionship website were created to speed up wildland fire response times, maximize current resources, and invite public private coordination.

The Huey Helicopter Siphon tank can utilize shallow, nearby water sources to fight fires before they grow when response times make all the difference in the preservation of wildlands and homes.

Partners & Key Staff

We collaborate to achieve more together. The following partners share grant and program responsibilities with Strategies Platform LLC to ensure key staff are available for all requirements.

Media Tools Enhance Engagement

Technology for Teams

The Reno Midtown Rotary website and group of web applications maintains communication for ambitious community minded Nevadans while providing a model for other clubs. Their integrated platform combines a public calendar, file sharing, private chat, and a simple online sign-up procedure to foster greater engagement. This approach enables members to easily connect, overcome participation barriers, and effectively coordinate volunteer efforts for service projects.

To achieve buy-in for all these tools, the success of this implementation came from aligning technological solutions with the club members' existing values and needs. While the specific tools (Google Drive, Weebly, GroupMe) might not be universally applicable, the case-lesson is the iterative approach: introducing technology as members sought solutions to specific challenges.

The Use of Print:

Supporting community-driven groups with technical assistance and printed capacity building can yield significant results. The Battle Born Derby Demons, for example, benefited from booklet development which strengthened their team identity and attracted new stakeholders in roller derby.

Furthermore, print materials can effectively elevate local business efforts to enhance placemaking. A Nevada skincare company strategically incorporated the restored historic building into its branding and marketing materials to emphasize the connection to the community and unique character for patrons.

In the final example, printed illustrations inspired partnership between city officials, small businesses, and the nonprofit sector to manage public space and improve social determinants of health for Reno, Nevada.