Real projects across housing, workforce development, community engagement, and public service design — where lived experience and human-centered design worked alongside county departments, state agencies, and community organizations to produce outcomes that neither could achieve working alone.
Loren serves as a lived experience consultant to Focus Strategies in the development of Contra Costa County's countywide Strategic Action Plan on Homelessness — a 16-month, cross-departmental planning process involving the County Administrator's Office, Health Department, Conservation and Development, Employment and Human Services, Probation, and the Housing Authority. Working directly alongside county department leadership, Loren provides critical insight on reducing barriers to access, improving system navigation, and strengthening engagement with services. His contributions are reflected in the Plan's core commitments: that the county integrate lived experience into decision-making, implementation, and evaluation — including reserved seats for people with lived experience on the new Homelessness Solutions Implementation Committee that will oversee the plan going forward.
Part of California's statewide Workforce Accelerator Fund 8.0 — a CWDB initiative specifically designed to build cross-system strategies between the workforce development system and the homeless Continuum of Care. Together, Loren and CivicMakers worked as a team: Loren's lived experience as someone who had navigated both systems surfaced exactly where the gaps were and what a real pathway would require; CivicMakers provided human-centered design and technical assistance to build the structures that made it work, culminating in the formal integration of the Workforce Development Board into the county's continuum of care for people experiencing homelessness.
This is the origin story of everything that came after. What started as Loren joining the Mobility LABs initiative as a community participant became one of the most documented examples of what happens when you put lived experience at the helm of a program — not just at the table.
As trust deepened, Loren moved into a program manager role — then into co-designer. Working alongside the community and RCF Connects staff in East Contra Costa, he helped expand the initiative's vision from direct service delivery toward something more comprehensive: resident-led action teams that identified Guaranteed Income as a viable economic floor for Antioch families. That required building consensus among stakeholders with different perspectives. The team did the work.
The work produced two durable outcomes. The first was Comment Studio — the community engagement and narrative infrastructure that grew out of the Mobility LABs model (formerly Mobility LABs of East Contra Costa, now operating as the platform for civic signal work in the county). The second was the CoCo Go BIG Guaranteed Income Pilot, launched January 2024: 20 adult residents receiving $400/month and 10 transitional-age youth receiving $200/month for six months — the first GI pilot in Contra Costa County, built from the ground up by the people it served.
The GI advocacy campaign that followed — rooted in the data, stories, and relationships built through Mobility LABs — helped catalyze $4.25 million in county investment to continue and expand guaranteed income pilots across Contra Costa.
Named in the Robin Hood Foundation / Equal Measure Year 3 Evaluation Report (January 2025) as a leading example of community-led design reaching Phase 5 of the Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership — defer to community. Cited specifically for hiring residents with lived experience of homelessness and poverty into leadership positions as a signal of sincere commitment and a driver of trust-based, transformative outcomes.
A universal framework for training people with lived experience in civic intelligence research, AI-directed analysis, and policy engagement — our methodology, codified as a training program that municipalities can adopt and customize.
A co-design process centering multiple vulnerable populations to shape accessible affordable housing policy — moving from listening sessions to actionable design recommendations with real community ownership.
A service design engagement surfacing structural barriers women face entering trade careers. Participatory research, co-design sessions, and actionable recommendations for workforce development programs statewide.
Multi-year engagement supporting the CA HHS Innovation Lab with co-design and facilitation for agency staff at all levels. Built internal capacity for collaborative problem-solving across California's largest health and human services system.
An iterative strategic planning process charting an actionable roadmap for Santa Rosa's Community Advisory Board — with robust engagement from both City staff and community to build capacity and cultivate long-term ownership.
A multi-year training partnership building HCD capacity across City of San José departments — creating space for staff to experience collaborative problem solving and embedding a design culture from the inside out.
"This has been a tremendous effort and exceeds expectations of what I expected we'd be able to accomplish through your involvement in this planning grant. This may change the game when it comes to connecting our unhoused to workforce services that can set them on a path to stability."
"We are incredibly grateful for the opportunity to partner on this project. Throughout the process, we felt genuinely supported and cared for, and we are very pleased with both the outcome and the collaborative experience alongside our participants."
"CivicMakers was instrumental in helping us explore new innovative practices. With their help, we were able to experiment with cutting-edge techniques to engage the public and improve services."
"CivicMakers provided a creative and engaging process to co-create a strategic plan with our Community Advisory Board, along with tools and techniques that we will continue to use in our engagement efforts."
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