— PROJECT NAME

Mosaic Atlas: An Equity and Inclusion Tool

Leading up to our annual event, I was tasked with mapping the cultural landscape of the neighborhoods surrounding our venue by researching and connecting with the cultural bearers wisdom keepers and community leaders.

As I identified stakeholders and conducted interviews, I uncovered patterns in how communities—particularly refugee and immigrant populations—maintain their cultural identities and sense of place. Slowly, I began to see a systemic disparity: only a handful of these culturally distinct communities had the proper infrastructure to have government resources and private foundation funding access, while many others remained invisible to funders.

Through this initial research, I discovered that Silicon Valley is home to one of the largest concentrations of culturally distinct communities. Yet local policymakers and funders lack the accurate data to account for them. This has yielded decisions based on anecdote rather than evidence. Acknowledging this gap in representation, I identified the need for a framework to map these communities and their cultural assets.

The Solution

I designed and piloted the foundational research framework that effectively would integrated direct personal narratives with hard data analysis. By maintaining academic standards and alongside building trust, we were able to gather asset data that collectively help locate and understand targeted cultural groups data frequently overlooked in conventional census methods.

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• Coordinated between academic researchers, city officials, and culture bearers, translating "data speak" into "community impact" and vice versa.
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• Conducted in-depth research and interview targeted stakeholders to verify data (people, places, organizations and events).
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• Built the back-end workflows that allowed us to categorize and visualize assets across 120+ cultural niches, creating a living database for decision-makers.

The Impact 

The demographic research project has evolved to the Mosaic Atlas and has become a primary tool for strategic decision-making in the region. It now provides the evidence base for local governments to adjust funding allocations and policies. The pilot's success not only established a scalable model that continues to drive the organization's expansion and impact but also created an "infrastructure of belonging."

This is more than a map; it's powerful visualization of the previously unseen contributions from under-resourced communities.