Work

Work, and where each piece stands.

Consulting sites usually show finished work. Much of ours is not finished, so every item here says what stage it is at and what has not happened yet.

I · Built and running

Systems we have built.

What each one does, and what it has not done yet.

The question step of the repeated-work check on a laptop screen, with two answers chosen.

Plate 01 Small Business · Operations

A first look at repeated work

The challenge

Most small businesses can list ten tasks they wish ran by themselves. Few can say which one costs the most time, or which to fix first.

What we built

A short questionnaire an owner fills in alone, before any call. Twenty-two questions cover five areas: new leads, follow-up, scheduling, reporting and data entry, and repeated admin. Fixed rules score each area and rank what to fix first, with a plain suggestion for each. The same answers always give the same result. The owner keeps the report as a PDF.

Working, internal build. It is built so the first conversation starts from a report the owner has already seen. No outside business has used it yet.

300,000Messages in one mailbox

Plate 02 Shown as words only. The mailbox holds other people’s mail.

Plate 02 Operations · Data

A 300,000-message mailbox, made findable

The challenge

One organization’s work mailbox had grown to about 300,000 messages. Real messages from people sat under years of receipts, newsletters and account notices.

What we built

A sender audit first, to see where the volume came from. A score that picks out real people, with one short call where the owner confirms priority contacts, who are then protected from every cleanup step. Four plain groups of automated mail, each with its own folder and an archive by age. Cleanup in batches that never deletes directly: removed mail waits in a holding folder and every action is logged. The whole method is packaged as a small desktop app.

Working desktop app. The method runs as one repeatable sequence. We have no run record or feedback yet, so we give no outcome numbers.

A list of writing tools on one shared platform.

The input form of one tool, for replying to a customer review.

Plate 03 Small Business · Tools

One platform, many small tools

The challenge

Small businesses repeat the same writing jobs every week: replying to reviews, writing up minutes, turning a process into a checklist, checking food cost on a menu. Each is small, but they add up, and a separate app for each would be slow to build.

What we built

One shared platform, then twenty-two tools on it. Each tool is a short module: its input fields, its instructions and, where it matters, a check on the output. Totals, percentages and length limits are computed in code. Every tool leaves missing facts as blank placeholders, and a person reviews each draft before it is used.

Internal build. Twenty-two tools and 202 automated tests, all passing on 24 September 2026. Nothing is sold or publicly hosted yet.

II · Initiatives in progress

Workstreams, and where each one stands.

Civic work with many partners. None of it is finished, and each status says what has not happened yet.

Food Systems · Economic Development · Public Policy

Philadelphia Food Economy

The challenge

Philadelphia treats its food economy as several separate problems — hunger, farming, jobs, procurement, waste — handled by separate departments and funded by separate people. Nobody owns the connections between them, and the connections are where most of the value sits.

Our role

Writing the framework that treats it as one economy: where food is grown, who buys it, who gets fed, who gets hired, and what the city spends today against what it could spend locally. The policy case and the investment case in the same document, because they are the same argument.

Partners

City and state offices, regional funders, growers and food-access organizations, and institutional buyers.

Status

In development. The framework documents are drafted and with partners for review. Nothing has been adopted and no commitments are in place.

Food Systems · Workforce · Real Estate

Controlled Environment Agriculture

The challenge

Philadelphia has the demand, the vacant square footage and the workforce need for year-round indoor growing, and almost none of the capacity. The buildings that could host it belong to institutions with no reason to think of themselves as farms.

Our role

Finding and assessing candidate sites, modeling what each one can grow and sell, and assembling the four parties a site needs before a single light goes in: the building owner, the operator, the buyer and the trainer.

Partners

Building owners, school and community facilities, growers and operators, institutional buyers, and workforce programs.

Status

Site assessment. Several sites assessed. One fell through when site control could not be secured. No site is operating, and no lease or offtake agreement is signed.

Healthcare · Food Access · Agriculture

Food Is Thy Medicine

The challenge

Healthcare pays for the consequences of bad food and almost nothing for good food. Produce prescriptions exist, but the supply, the referral route and the reimbursement rarely line up in the same place at the same time.

Our role

Designing the pathway end to end — who grows it, who prescribes it, who pays, who delivers it and what gets measured — so that a health system is asked to join something that already works rather than to invent one.

Partners

Health systems and clinics, growers, food-access organizations, and the funders in between.

Status

Concept stage. Design work only. No clinical partner is committed and no patient data is involved. Any pilot would be built to meet HIPAA and Pennsylvania consent requirements before it began.

Workforce · Hospitality

Hospitality & Culinary Workforce

The challenge

Hospitality has permanent vacancies and a training system that produces people who leave inside a year. Employers blame the pipeline, the pipeline blames the employers, and neither of them is entirely wrong.

Our role

Starting from the employer side — what the jobs actually require, what they pay, and what a first year has to look like for someone to still be there at the end of it — and building training to that rather than to a curriculum.

Partners

Restaurant and hotel operators, training providers, workforce boards and community organizations.

Status

Employer conversations. Early. Scoping with operators. No program is running and no funding is in place.

Municipal Strategy · Circular Economy · Economic Development

Waste-to-Value

The challenge

The city spends heavily to move waste out and captures almost none of the value in it. Food waste in particular is carried as a disposal cost when it is an input to something.

Our role

Two strategy documents setting out where the value is, what the city could procure differently, and what the private and nonprofit sides would need in order to be in a position to bid for it.

Partners

City departments and authorities, haulers and processors, institutional waste generators, and prospective operators.

Status

Strategy drafted, internal review. The documents are written and in internal review. They have not been presented to the City. The City has announced its intent to award four-year disposal contracts, pending Council; recycling is procured separately and that process is still open.

Procurement · Small Business · Anchor Institutions

Anchor Procurement & Local Business Growth

The challenge

The region's anchor institutions spend enormous sums locally in principle. In practice a small business cannot meet the insurance, volume and payment-terms requirements to get onto the list, so the money leaves the city.

Our role

Working both ends at once — what the institution genuinely needs to see, and what a small supplier needs in order to produce it — and building the intermediary steps that neither side will build on its own.

Partners

Hospitals, universities, large employers, food service contractors and small suppliers.

Status

In development. Conversations under way with buyers and with suppliers. No procurement agreements are in place.

Trade · Investment · Agriculture

Africa–Philadelphia Trade & Investment

The challenge

Two-way trade between Philadelphia and African markets runs on individual relationships and almost no infrastructure. Goods move, capital does not, and neither side has a route that survives one person leaving.

Our role

Building the relationships and the practical infrastructure around a first agricultural pilot — production, offtake, logistics, and people at both ends who will still be there next year.

Partners

Growers and cooperatives, importers and distributors, diaspora business networks and regional trade organizations.

Status

Pilot planning. A first agricultural pilot is being planned. Nothing is contracted and nothing has shipped.

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Most of this work started because someone described a problem out loud and it reached us.

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