Cheap intelligence, expensive institutions
What happens when the cost of analysis collapses but the cost of deciding doesn't.
I help public-sector and mission-driven organizations put widely available AI and data tools to work — with the policy guardrails, decision systems, and hands-on builds to match. Grounded in a decade inside major public projects.
Most AI advice comes from people who've never moved a decision through a public organization. Most public-sector veterans can't build the tools. This practice is the overlap.
Years on the owner's side of one of BC's largest infrastructure projects: briefings, stakeholder systems, government reporting, and the real constraints of procurement and accountability.
Interactive maps, dashboards, stakeholder databases, and AI workflows that ship — built on open, low-cost infrastructure your team can actually maintain.
AI use guidance calibrated to public accountability: privacy, procurement, records, and the trust obligations that mission-driven organizations carry.
Engagements are layered like a good map: a base of advisory and policy work, with implementation added only where it earns its place.
Where AI and cheap intelligence genuinely help your organization — and where they don't. Practical, written guidance your leadership can adopt.
Scoped builds that follow from the advisory work, matched to your needs, budget, and capacity to maintain.
Hands-on sessions that leave your team able to run the tools without me: AI fundamentals for public-interest work, prompt and workflow design, and data literacy for decision-makers. Half-day to multi-session formats.
A mix of public builds and described engagements. Some client details are generalized to respect confidentiality. (Placeholder copy — to be finalized.)
An interactive national map of ~180 major clean energy and infrastructure projects, built for a clean economy nonprofit and its research partners. Open-source mapping stack on serverless infrastructure — fast, co-branded, and cheap to run.
Implementation of a shared stakeholder platform across owner and contractor teams on a multi-billion-dollar transit build — 15,000+ records feeding executive reporting and construction mitigation decisions.
Data strategy and systems leadership for a city-scale civic organization: voter-facing analytics, field data infrastructure, and decision reporting under tight timelines and volunteer capacity. (High-level by design.)
[Dummy case study] Assessment and staff-facing AI use guidance for a values-driven organization: where to adopt, where to hold, and how to document decisions for funders and boards.
"Walker understood our constraints before we finished explaining them — and then built exactly the thing we needed, not the thing consultants usually sell."— [Placeholder] Executive Director, clean economy nonprofit
"Rare to find someone who can brief a board in the morning and ship a working data product by the end of the week."— [Placeholder] Director, public-sector program
Baselayer is my publication on data, AI, and how big things get built in the public interest. The name is the point: the foundational layer everything else is drawn on.
What happens when the cost of analysis collapses but the cost of deciding doesn't.
Why shared reference data beats better meetings for multi-party coordination.
AI policy for public bodies that enables instead of just restricting.
Tell me a bit about your organization and what you're working through. I read everything myself and usually reply within two business days — often to set up a free 30-minute working session. No deck, no pitch — bring a real problem.
I've spent the last decade at the interface where public projects meet the public: community and government relations on one of BC's largest infrastructure investments, engagement design for regional policy initiatives, and data and climate policy work for clients from PwC to municipal governments.
The thread through all of it: complex public decisions go better when the people making them can actually see what's going on. I build the systems that make that possible — and now, with capable intelligence available to any organization at commodity prices, I help mission-driven teams put it to work responsibly.
Berkeley political economy, SFU Semester in Dialogue, Climatebase Fellowship. Based in Vancouver, working across BC and Canada.