My job is to change the cancer paradigm from fighting/war to befriending and acceptance through innovation in patient-centered design in medicine, for living instead of dying. I'm working alongside innovative doctors to design new systems of support for cancer patients throughout the cancer journey. I am creating space to live and thrive by accepting my cancer, making more and more room for me to live. The GusProject.com is a new project to design prototypes of Gus for other patients, blog on the hard questions, challenge our assumptions and invite interesting thinkers to talk and write about the idea and their own experience openly and honestly.The GusProject will be funding small innovative mini-grants, imagine a 1,000 plates spinning of patient led inspired projects, generating imagination, meaning and new ideas for patient's with cancer. Through these small grants, we will catalyze ideas and action, helping patients, caregivers and others to do something important to their life, helping them thrive and live.

Curate talent, connect people and ideas, provide deep public sector insight, design action and training initiatives. Speaker, panelist, author, designer and connector. Bring experience and credibility to analyze ideas, link talent and resources and fluid ability to see the bigger picture. Take on projects combining applied practice, technology and action.Some sample activities:HackPaloAlto, National Hackathon Day, June 2013. Design Thinking & Technology in Community. Highest attendance is US.SFHighground Hackathon June 2013 - Stopping Gun Violence, Spon. Ron Conway, InnovateSF.Invited talk, “Another Side of the Coin, Public Institutions” ReConstitutional Convention, Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, CA, April 27, 2013Consultant, California College of Arts MBA Program in Design Strategy 2012-presentCo-led 2012 Strategic Direction Workshop, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Innovation Lab in Washington, DC 2012Co-author with Christian Bason, Director, MindLab, Denmark, book chapter, Global Perspectives of Design Thinking in the Public Sector, London School of Economics 2012. Conducted US case research. Member, 2012 Business + Sustainability Summit, California College of Arts in San Francisco, CA Member, 2011 Stanford University Design Summit, d.School Stanford UniversityGrant Writer/Strategic Consultant, Sustainable Prisons, Lettuce Grow Foundation, Portland, OR 2012Strategic Consultant, ThinkPlace, Australia, Washington, DC 2012Speaker, 2010 National Institute on Money in State Politics, Transparency, Accountability and Civic Participation, MontanaGuest blogger, Sunlight Foundation, Web 2.0 and Obama Open Government Directive.Online groups, Design Thinking in the Public Sector, “Who Runs the Show” Working Across Generations, Capacity Building, Evaluation, Social Media and Leadership and Gov 2.0 ≠ Open Government.Writer for National Association of Government Communicators on Social Media & Government.

Co-Author, with Chrisitan Bason (editor), of a chapter in a new book, Design for Policy, building on a different chapter we wrote in 2011 for Design Thinking in Government, for London School of Economics (LSE), unpublished to date. Our chapter will feature international case examples of design thinking in the public sector. Part of my responsibility is researching representative cases in the US, at the local, national and federal levels. It's great to work with Christian on this project.

Provided insight and feedback on company goals for public sector innovation initiatives in the United States.

Facilitated group on differences between Gov 2.0 and Open Gov.

The Town of Los Gatos in California invited me to facilitate building a collaboration between government, non-profits, citizens and youth to reduce alcohol related problems and death with teenagers in the community.This collaboration utilized methodology developed in the Community Partnership in setting up a challenging collaboration to address high risk teenage behavior. It was a successful project and has won several federal and state awards.

Evaluated President Clinton's Advancing Community Policing Grants in the United States. Designed the entire evaluation to be congruent with community policing values of collaboration, innovation and partnership. Built a strong Advisory Board of Senior Law Enforcement Officials to guide the project evaluation and participate in developing new best practices.Published a book: Community Policing in Action: A Practitioner's Eye View of Organizational Change. This book was distributed to over 7,000 local law enforcement agencies.

Executive Director/Principal Investigator of a $3 million HHS federal project to build community collaboration models to solve social and community problems. This was an applied social science project which involved setting up an entire organization from scratch, including all fiscal, legal and personnel procedures. A Board of Directors, new staff and contracts.All our fiscal work had to meet the A-133 federal audit requirements.The Partnership explored the role of an intermediary organization in facilitating community groups in collaborating, planning and evaluating various projects of great value. Each project was compelling in nature and had to have core champions and leaders for us to use our resources.We developed an innovative methodology in organizational facilitation, project development and qualitative evaluation creating best new practices. Our most interesting project was helping the American Indian community address the nature of "What is an Urban American Indian Tribe". While we did not have the technology available today, our research and results do address many of the current Open Government challenges.

Challenge: Build a government agency to address preventing the fundamental causes and conditions for high risk behavior by kids. (Up to this point most efforts were information campaigns targeting schools with speakers and flyer's.)Using my understanding of the risk factor research, organizational design and the strategic role of a county agency, we partnered up with others to leverage resources and created an innovative Prevention Office. Starting with $60,000 in original funding, generated $1M budget to support a comprehensive approach to prevention. Thirty-six school districts partnered with us to train teachers, implement new school policies, and dramatically increase community and parent involvement. This initiative was designed for sustainability and a return on investment.Working with our diverse communities we designed a mini-grant program to build community capacity and capability in research and practice. We granted 60 unique grants to diverse community groups to strengthen prevention initiatives. We funded social marketing campaigns, pow-wows, workshops, community gatherings, dance and art events, evaluation conferences and other projects meant to address community and family risk factors. Our goal was extensive community involvement in the education and prevention of drug abuse, juvenile delinquency and other problem behaviors. We worked cross sector and cross agency, building new agreements in resource deployment. The County Board of Supervisors supported the Prevention Office, both strategically and politically.I managed 15 employees, all reporting and grant writing, links to state and federal agencies, serving on many state and federal boards and task forces. I was a well-known speaker on this endeavor.