creating meaningful

health visualizations

My roots are in public health data. I started my career as an analyst and evaluator, but quickly discovered that the most joyful parts of my work were in creating data visualizations for reports, infographics, dashboards, and other products.

Over time, I shifted my focused within public health programs increasingly towards chart and dashboard design. I spent eight years working in global health, five years in technology consulting, and now work independently, with the goal to make the fundamentals of data visualization a core skill learned by any public health professional. In addition to consulting,

Data visualization as a field where you can work full time, similar to pursuing a path as a full time writer, or as one tool in your tool box, similar to the ways most working professionals write emails or reports as part of their larger scope of work.

I believe anyone can learn, rather quickly, how to create a meaningful chart, focusing on your audience, the analysis finding you need to communicate, your chart selection, and the many seemingly tiny design decisions that go into a great graph. Then, you can spend a career building on those fundamental principles, refining your personal style, and experimenting with the many ways we break 'the rules' in data viz.

Data visualization is a powerful tool - but with power comes great responsibility. I look for opportunities to collaborate with organizations looking to level-up their data visualization capabilities and think critically about the impact of the visualizations we create in public health.

Building communities to share knowledge about data visualization is critical to supporting individuals and teams on their learning journeys in data viz, which is why I serve as the current Executive Director and was a founding board member of the global Data Visualization Society.