Public sector leader with 16+ years at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation who has spent his career walking into disorganized or nonexistent programs and building the systems that make them work. Designed and stood up CDCR's Office of Public Records from the ground up. He wrote the implementation proposal, built every operational procedure, and put together the oversight framework now governing 7,000+ annual public records requests across 500+ users where nothing like it existed before. Previously restructured CDCR's statewide recruitment operation from a fragmented three-region model into a coordinated pipeline with local teams at all 35 institutions, and reorganized a 20-person training division responsible for all mandatory statewide training into an operation with clear divisions of responsibility. Led the procurement of a ~$2M enterprise platform serving 60,000+ employees and led the changes that got CDCR off the State Auditor's High-Risk List after more than a decade. Every major role has involved the same thing: building something that didn't exist yet, in a department with 60,000 employees and very little room for error.
Core Competencies
Program Design & ImplementationOrganizational RestructuringIT Governance & CompliancePublic Records & eDiscoveryStrategic ProcurementWorkforce & Succession PlanningCross-Functional LeadershipPolicy & Process ArchitectureStakeholder EngagementBusiness AnalysisInstructional Design & LMS
Click any competency to see where it's demonstrated.
Professional Experience
Information Technology Specialist I — Office of Public Records
California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR) · Sacramento, CA
March 2023 – Present
Authored the implementation proposal that established OPR as a centralized office, laying out the mission, the org structure, and the operational modeladopted by executive leadership and the agency secretary.
Designed every operational procedure, process flow, and swimlane diagram for an office that had no predecessor, creating the statewide framework now governing how 7,000+ PRA requests per year are received, assigned, reviewed, and released across 500+ active users.
Built and implemented a mandatory pre-release Quality Assurance process for all PRA responses leaving the Department, catching sensitive information that shouldn't go out the door and reducing the Department's exposure to litigation across all institutions and program areas.
Created the processes and relationships that established OPR as the official liaison between departmental programs and the Office of Legal Affairs, and between the Department and the Governor's Office on public records matters, a function that simply didn't exist before.
Serve as primary system administrator for CDCR's Public Records Portal (GovQA/Granicus), managing provisioning, system enhancements, and platform reliability for statewide PRA operations.
Conducted a structured risk evaluation of NextRequest against the existing GovQA platform, producing an analysis that stopped a premature migration and kept the existing system stable.
Section Chief — Instructional Design & Training Technology (SSM II, Supervisory)
California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR) · Sacramento, CA
June 2020 – March 2023
Inherited an unstructured office where all staff shared all duties with no real division of labor — reorganized the entire operation into distinct Operational and Administrative divisions, with Ops handling training delivery and instructional design, and Admin handling scheduling, reporting, contract management, and training center maintenance.
Ran two statewide program areas — instructional design operations and training technology/employee development — with up to 20 staff including 5 direct reports.
Responsible for all mandatory statewide training — including EEO/Sexual Harassment, Basic and Advanced Supervisory, and Managerial Training — as well as supplemental programs delivered through university partnerships with Sacramento State and Humboldt State, and private providers including Franklin Covey.
Oversaw the Learning Management System and managed the Upward Mobility Program, Succession Management Program, Career Development Advisory Committee, and workforce planning functions serving 60,000+ employees.
Accelerated curriculum delivery for high-stakes programs — New Employee Orientation, Basic Correctional Officer Academy, and Off-Post Training — by reworking the internal processes that were slowing everything down.
Coordinated executive steering committees and served as the Department's lead respondent to the State Personnel Board's triennial audit of public agency mandatory training compliance, maintaining full compliance across all training and workforce development functions.
Staff Services Manager II — Office of Training & Professional Development
California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR) · Sacramento, CA
November 2017 – June 2020
Led the enterprise procurement and statewide rollout of Qualtrics for 60,000+ users, negotiating a ~$2M five-year licensing agreement that became the Department's primary survey and feedback platform.
Directed workforce planning across 450+ classifications and managed the Succession Management and Upward Mobility programs, building the foundation for leadership development across the Department.
Led the HR program fixes that got CDCR removed from the State Auditor's High-Risk List — ending a designation the Department had carried for over a decade.
Oversaw the Department's Learning Center in Sacramento, managing facility operations and program scheduling.
Staff Services Manager I — Recruitment & Data Unit, OPOS
California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR) · Sacramento, CA
July 2015 – November 2017
Inherited a fragmented recruitment operation split across three regional teams (Sacramento, Fresno, Rancho Cucamonga) with no local institutional presence — restructured the entire model by negotiating an interdivisional MOU that established local recruitment teams at all 35 CDCR institutions statewide.
Designed a tiered recruitment architecture: local teams handled event attendance using professionally designed, standardized materials; regional teams managed advertising and marketing contracts; headquarters ran statewide strategy — giving the Department a coordinated pipeline for the first time.
Managed a $1M budget and built the data-driven recruitment strategy that cut the peace officer selection cycle from 24+ months to 18 months, putting officers on the ground faster across California's prison system.
Launched nationwide marketing campaigns across print, radio, TV, and digital channels, generating 4,000+ applications per month toward a hiring goal of 7,000 new officers.
Earlier Career
Associate Governmental Program Analyst — Office of Peace Officer Selection
CDCR · Sacramento, CA
April 2014 – June 2015
Program support for statewide testing, background investigations, and recruitment operations. Built database queries and statistical reporting systems for selection component analysis.
Associate Governmental Program Analyst — BACS Project
CDCR · Rancho Cordova, CA
July 2013 – April 2014
Lead analyst on the Biometric Access Control System project — maintained the project plan, mitigated risks, and served as secondary point of contact for Headquarters and Enterprise Information Services on all BACS matters.
Staff Services Analyst — Office of Personnel Services
CDCR · Sacramento, CA
October 2012 – January 2013
Special assistant to the Chief of OPS. Complex analytical support and departmental reorganization.
Staff Services Analyst / Office Technician — CA Sex Offender Management Board
CDCR · Sacramento, CA
April 2010 – September 2012
Technical policy analysis, contract development for statewide training, legislative analysis, and fiscal database management. Progressed from clerical support to complex analytical work in two years.
Additional Experience
Co-Owner & Operations Lead — Más Bueno Boutique
West Sacramento & Midtown Sacramento, CA
March 2020 – Present
Co-founded a retail boutique and grew it to two locations plus e-commerce, handling everything from daily operations to long-term strategy as the business grew.
Selected and implemented every operational system: POS (Shopify), payroll (Gusto), VOIP (Spectrum), and scheduling (WhenIWork).
Manage HR, hiring, lease negotiations, insurance, legal compliance, vendor relationships, and marketing across two physical locations and an online storefront.
Publisher & Writer — Reason & Resolve
Substack
2023 – Present
Publishes essays on leadership, public sector ethics, and organizational systems thinking.
Author of Principled Systems Leadership, a ~50,000-word manuscript on institutional leadership for mid-career public sector professionals.