During my tenure at Deloitte, I worked predominantly with a state government’s Department of Health. Together with my two bosses and a small team developers, I focused on the translation of healthcare policy to actionable, public-facing updates and changes. Much of today’s social benefit programs are run digitally, with eligibility portals, benefit applications, and work-plan tracking all taking place online. As the public benefit domain changes frequently with state level partisan shifts and developing technology, ensuring the state populace has up-to-date, accessible, widespread benefit solutions is a constant race. Providing equitable, accurate, and user-friendly digital benefit solutions requires a deep understanding of policy requirements, technological limitations, and needs of the state population.

Most notably in my role, I worked to provide food-benefits to school students unable to attend school in the spring of 2020 due to COVID-19. Without access school breakfasts and lunches, many households were placed in very tight monetary and nutritional situations. The condensed timeline and grave stakes encouraged immense collaboration between the state agency and Deloitte, with myself and my counterparts acting as the point team to implement a novel benefit delivery system. Ultimately, we successfully issued an initial $100+ million in food benefits to households with school children, reducing what was previously the standard implementation lead time by >80%. Additionally, we laid the foundation for continual benefit delivery in the event the pandemic continued into the next school year, which, unfortunately, it did.

Additionally, I supported Deloitte in the energy and climate space, helping develop corporate greenhouse gas inventory work as well as utility and regulatory oriented electrification projects. It was here in the supporting roles, outside of my primary project work, that I reinforced my passion for all things climate change. This influenced my decision to look for work directly in the greenhouse gas management and sustainability space outside of Deloitte, as it was not immediately accessible within the company at my level.