Work / The Urban Institute
From scattered vendors to one system for access.
Research only matters if people can read it. At The Urban Institute I built a nationwide language-services system: vetting interpreters and translators, then wiring them into how events and publications actually get made. Accessibility stopped being a last-minute scramble and became part of the workflow, reaching 70 events with live interpretation and 100+ research products translated for multilingual and Deaf audiences.
The problem
The Urban Institute was making research for the public, then leaving large parts of that public out.
Events got planned without interpreters booked, translations came back uneven, and nobody owned a process for finding good vendors. The result was last-minute scrambles, unequal access for non-English-speaking and Deaf audiences, and reach the work had already earned but never collected.
No shared process across 20+ languagesMy role
I led the whole build, from vendor research and vetting to process design, relationship management, and quality assurance.
I worked across event teams, communications, and research staff to bake accessibility into the standard way of working, so it lived in the workflow instead of riding on whoever remembered to ask.
The process
I started from what teams actually needed, then built the network and the workflow around it.
Interviews with event planners, researchers, and communications staff to map real language needs and where the volume sat, before sourcing a thing.
A vetted vendor network: ASL interpreters, spoken-language interpreters, and translation providers across dozens of languages, quality-checked before anyone booked them.
A streamlined intake and booking workflow, a quality-review rubric, and a living resource hub, so staff could self-serve with confidence instead of starting from zero.
By the numbers
Outcomes
Leadership took it straight into how events get planned. Accessibility became the default, not an exception someone had to fight for each time.
The Urban Institute's audience reach grew, its equity commitments got teeth, and the build became a model for inclusive design across the organization. The work earned the institute's President's Award for Advancing Equity.
President's Award · Advancing EquityNext project