Overview

Last summer as a member of the Policy Innovation Lab Fellowship, our team was asked by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to create a product that could expand the green bond market. Throughout the summer, we received mentorship from the Mozilla’s Fix-The-Internet Incubator, specifically their Open Lab. The success of this project was carried over into the work I did as the capstone project manager.

Although green bonds are growing, they are not growing fast enough. The SFPUC is considered a leader in green bond disclosure but strongly believed that the market needed more accessible tools to capture the impacts of their green bond funded projects and attract more green bond investors.

Policy Innovation Lab Fellowship (May 2020 - Aug 2020)

I led the user research process for our target users: primarily ESG-aligned investors, municipal issuers, underwriters, and SF residents.  Our team interviewed 19 people via Zoom. Throughout the project, I facilitated all interviews and crafted research protocol. I also designed a dynamic user research database to keep track of our scheduled interviews and organize notes. I also designed all the email and LinkedIn note templates to ensure higher response rates.

This project was the first time that I worked with Figma. I quickly learned how useful this tool was in creating tanble prototypes to tease out user ideas.

In the bottom figure, I incorporated feedback around trying to potentially use this tool to increase public engagement in this material.

The top figure shows the first iteration of my prototype, based on my initial literature review of the prototype.

Heinz Capstone (Aug 2020 - Jan 2021)

I crafted a proposal for this work to be continued as part of my master’s capstone project. As project manager, I led a 6-person team including data analysts and front/back-end developers.

I worked with our data analysts to design the database based on the publicly available data from the SFPUC green bond reports. I designed the intake form for municipal issuer to upload data to our platform. I led an agile work environment that ensured that all team members had the opportunity to explore aspects of product development and meet our key milestones.

Social Entrepreneurship Course (Jan 2021)

Given the extremely positive reception from our partners and target audience for our prototype and our success in building a fully-functional prototype, I led my team’s efforts to launch this prototype into a non-profit startup.

I took the course, Social Entrepreneurship, where I learned how to take Impact Green through a model “accelerator” program curriculum and pitch this non-profit to potential investors.  This included  competitive analysis, target market segmentation, our business model, and pre-seed raise.  Since completing the course, I will be leading our team to seek non-profit funding to pursue this endeavor.

Before this project, I knew nothing about green bonds. It was a privilege to be apart of building a product that shaped my understanding of what is possible in public interest tech.