First 5 Alameda County is a public entity focused on supporting the first five years of a child’s life in Alameda County, regardless of race or income. Their Emergency Grants are designed to help Family Child Care programs and child care centers stay open, buy furniture and supplies, pay their staff, and more. They approached our team to help create an application portal and review system that could be compliant with the beuruacracltic hurdles everyday childcare facilities have to face — within six months.

From ideation, we scoped an MVP focused on reducing redundancies and human error, making it quick and easy to approve over $16M in direct funding for distressed childcare centers. As the PM, I wrote user stories to explain feature requests, organized and maintained the backlog, and continually communicated our progress to the client. Using largely low code solutions, our team created a full system based on user feedback, stakeholder interviews, and real-time application data. To ensure adoption, we trained their team on how to use, update, and modify the tool for future programs.