Select Projects

the chinatown stitch: reconnecting philadelphia
to vine street

washington avenue repaving and safety improvement project

west philadelphia
transportation safety improvements

A few of my favorite (work) things

Transportation planning encompasses wide ranging, diverse topics and practices. As a naturally curious person who loves learning new skills and solving problems, I’ve worked on a lot of different aspects of transportation projects and their management.

Here are a few of the things I’m most proud of:

  • In 2023, the City of Philadelphia was awarded $3 million to install traffic calming and street safety improvements in the Fairhill neighborhood. In my capacity as a Project Manager with the Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems (OTIS), I advocated for the project application and prepared a significant portion of the successful grant application, including:

    • Application project narrative text

    • Application project overview text

    • Detailed project cost estimate including construction items

    • Conceptual engineering plans detailing proposed improvements

  • In 2016 I traveled to Santiago de Queretaro, Mexico, with a cohort of City Planning students from the University of Pennsylvania. We worked with Queretaro’s Secretary of Mobility to develop a phased bicycle mobility plan for the city. One of my most significant contributions was the creation of a walkability index. Secretary of Mobility staff requested the dataset I created for the index because it was more comprehensive than anything they had at the time.

  • I presented on Philadelphia’s protected bicycle facility projects at the 2021 Transportation Engineering and Safety Conference (TESC) as part of a panel discussing multimodal projects across Pennsylvania. It was an excellent opportunity to discuss the City of Philadelphia’s work with engineering professionals from across the commonwealth. My presentation featured a series of maps conveying the breadth and scope of the City of Philadelphia’s work, along with plans for future network expansion.

Engagement

It’s often difficult getting meaningful project input, but this was especially true in 2020 when COVID-19 required that my office reevaluate our upcoming engagement plans for multiple projects. I created this graphic to include in a project video we made for Washington Avenue; it was a nice way to connect to our stakeholders with a bit of humor (and who doesn’t love Gritty?)

Planning

As a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, I specialized in both Sustainable Transportation Infrastructure and Community Economic Development. For a CED class, I developed a commercial corridor profile and redevelopment plan for a section of Chester Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia. We were not required to create posters for the project, but I used the opportunity to sharpen my mapping and data representation skills. A full version of my final report was published in the City Planning Department’s student journal, Panorama, in 2016.

Data Analysis

I was one of two project managers in charge of the City of Philadelphia’s Washington Avenue repaving and improvement project. In February 2022, I was asked to prepare an updated crash analysis document for the corridor, reviewing prominent crash trends and summarizing tools and strategies to address them. Completing the analysis required in-depth review of over 160 individual crash records. This analysis helped enable installation of hardened centerlines and other traffic calming measures on Washington Avenue between Broad Street and Grays Ferry Avenue.

When I enrolled in CPLN 5030 - Modeling Geographic Objects during my first semester studying City Planning at Penn, I didn’t know it would change my life, but it did. It quickly became favorite course and I threw myself into learning everything I could, incorporating GIS into assignments in other classes for extra practice. When Professor Amy Hillier MSW PhD asked me to be her TA the following fall, I readily accepted. Acting as professor Hillier’s teaching assistant gave me the opportunity to refine my skills and gain experience teaching GIS to others.

Four years after graduating, Amy called to see if I’d be interested in teaching her URBS 3300/URBS 5300 - GIS Applications in Social Sciences course while she was on sabbatical. One semester turned into an ongoing opportunity, and I have taught GIS Applications in Social Sciences each fall. Due to high course demand and tt the request of the Urban Studies program, I agreed to teach an additional spring section beginning in 2025.

Course Instruction at the University of Pennsylvania

Course Evaluations

Each semester, the University asks students to complete anonymous course evaluations. Course evaluations provide students the opportunity to give feedback to faculty about their experiences. These evaluations also provide professors with critical information for improving their classes. My course has an average score of 88% for questions related to quality and outcomes.

Students are asked to complete course evaluations (or opt out) before they can see their grades, and instructors cannot see the results of our course evaluations before grade submission.

Since 2022 I’ve also asked my students to complete an anonymous supplemental evaluation. It asks the following questions:

  • What aspect(s) of this course were most useful or valuable?

  • What aspects of this course were least useful or valuable?

  • What specific things could the instructor do to improve this course going forward?

  • Were there specific readings you really enjoyed?

  • Were there specific readings you especially disliked?

  • If you could add a module or discussion topic to the syllabus, what would it be?

  • If you could remove a module or discussion topic from the syllabus, what would it be?

The results help me address course-specific deficiencies, update materials as appropriate, and adjust the ways I present information to address student concerns and feedback.

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The concepts introduced in class readings and discussions have fundamentally reshaped my perception of mapping.


GRADUATE STUDENT, NURSING

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The skills and concepts I learned in this class are immensely helpful for thinking in interdisciplinary terms.


GRADUATE STUDENT, ENGLISH

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I am confident leaving this course that I have tools to more comprehensively communicate research findings- and how to engage folks in the work because I have enabled them to more fully understand the bigger picture.


GRADUATE STUDENT, HEALTH AND POLICY RESEARCH