Work

Driving bold solutions to Maryland’s most pressing challenges — starting with child poverty and economic mobility

Together with Maryland residents, we leverage a multidisciplinary team skillset of data science, civic design, public policy, analytics, community engagement, and project management to deliver at start-up speed — taking solutions from concept to launch in months, not years.

01

Unlocking economic mobility for families and working parents

Reducing the structural drivers of poverty and ensuring families have greater access to work, wages, and wealth.

Developing new platforms and personalized tools that help essential child care workers build wealth.
Helping Marylanders build retirement accounts and emergency savings through our work with MarylandSaves.
Shaping child care policy through data-driven scenario analysis.
Understanding how families’ and workers’ needs are evolving in an AI-driven world.

02

Catalyzing growth for businesses, entrepreneurs, and communities

Building an inclusive and resilient economy and fostering thriving communities through focused investment and strategic resource deployment.

Fostering thriving businesses and communities by connecting community builders and essential small businesses — like child care and fresh food entrepreneurs — to data insights, funding, and resources through the Maryland Community Compass.
Helping displaced workers gain access to new entrepreneurial skills and resources through a partnership with RAISE US.
Delivering new inclusive financial solutions to Maryland’s community banks and credit unions and enhancing access to capital in underserved communities through the Maryland Community Investment Venture (MCIV) Fund.
Benchmarking how Maryland businesses are adopting AI, the barriers they face, and the support they need to compete.

03

Building innovation capacity in government

Reimagining state government by equipping agencies and civil servants with new tools, capabilities, and skills.

Equipping the state with new methods to streamline labor-intensive legislative research.
Modeling policy and budget scenarios to ground new programs and decisions in evidence.
Building a shared open-source library of tools any agency can adopt and reuse.
Providing civil servants with training on new tools and skills to improve service delivery.

Explore the Maryland Community Compass

Take a walk through the story of the Maryland Community Compass — from the challenges facing community developers to how the expanded platform helps unlock neighborhood data, site research, and capital stacking for Maryland communities.

Download Gallery Walk (PDF)

Slide 1: Meet the Maryland State Innovation Team — team photos, roles, and an overview of the layered research and design approach used to reach 1,000+ residents across 12 partner agencies.

Slide 2: The Compass Journey — timeline from June 2025 discovery research through the September 2026 launch of the expanded Maryland Community Compass with Governor Wes Moore and Anthropic.

Slide 3: The Challenge — Sourcing Neighborhood Data. Community developers spend $2K to $4K per year and 2+ weeks combing 25+ webpages just to pull neighborhood data together.

Slide 4: The Compass — Neighborhood Insights. Up-to-date neighborhood-level metrics for development activity, demand, and growth in a single view.

Slide 5: The Challenge — Conducting Site Research. Fragmented zoning, permitting, and eligibility data slows every site evaluation.

Slide 6: The Compass — Site Insights. Instantly evaluate what is buildable, with site-specific regulations, zoning, permitted uses, funding eligibility, and community plan linkages.

Slide 7: The Challenge — Capital Stacking. Fragmented funding sources make it hard for community developers to assemble the capital stack a project needs.

Slide 8: The Compass — Find Funding. A database of 2,600+ funding opportunities including grants, loans, training programs, rebates, tax credits, technical assistance, and private-sector resources.

Slide 9: Thank you — acknowledgement of the collaborators whose input and expertise made the expanded Maryland Community Compass possible.

Use the arrows above to browse the gallery.

Partner with Us

We’re always eager to explore new opportunities for collaboration and hear community ideas or feedback.

Contact Us