FedLab: Human-Centered Design

Barbara C. Morton assumed her current duties in July 2016 when she joined the Veterans Experience Office (VEO) as Deputy Chief Veterans Experience Officer. In this role Barbara is responsible for building a lasting customer experience capability at VA and sharing best practices across sister Federal Agencies. She was a recipient for the Gears of Government President’s Award (2019) and the Service to the Citizen Award (2019) for her role in transforming VA’s capabilities to provide Veterans with an excellent customer experience.

Barbara joined the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2006 as a Staff Attorney at the Board of Veterans’ Appeals (Board). She served the Board in a variety of other capacities, to include Special Counsel to the Appellate Group, Special Assistant to the Vice Chairman, Executive Assistant to the Chairman, and Executive Director for the Office of Management, Planning & Analysis. While at the Board, Barbara stood up and led the Board’s Appeals Modernization OIT efforts, which included securing industry technologists from United States Digital Service to develop and launch new appeals platforms.

A native of Rockport, Massachusetts, Barbara attended Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY, earning a degree in psychology and philosophy. After receiving her J.D. from Suffolk University Law School, Barbara completed two clerkships in the New England area and thereafter pursued an LL.M. in constitutional law at Georgetown Law. She has published a variety of law review articles, including two pieces relating to posttraumatic stress disorder. Barbara dabbles in the arts, to include painting, photography, ceramics, and stained glass, and she loves following professional tennis and basketball. She also enjoys volunteering for various Veteran-centered causes, to include events at Arlington National Cemetery and the annual Toys-for-Tots campaign.

Maura is a social impact designer, researcher, organizational strategist and facilitator. She is passionate about tackling some of society’s most complex human challenges. She has contributed research and designed solutions addressing urban challenges such as education, poverty, redlining, and mental illness. In recent years, Maura was one of the founding members of the City of Austin Innovation Office.

In this role, she started an innovation team to address homelessness after being awarded a multi-million dollar grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. She has facilitated the co-design of community solutions such as an award-winning homelessness outreach team. At the beginning of 2019, Maura joined the Presidential Innovation Fellows to help the Veterans Experience Office continue to mature its capabilities in delivering Customer Experience. She believes that human-centered design and co-creation are powerful tools for creating equitable services and improving community outcomes.

Scott currently serves as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow, where he’s detailed to the Department of Veterans Affairs Office Veterans Experience Office (VA VEO). As an innovation specialist and organizational designer, he’s been helping move the VA VEO towards a more veteran-focused infrastructure and experience with human-centered design practices.

Prior to joining PIF, he co-led a social innovation and design consulting agency based in New York called Community by Design, that delivered human-centric concepts at the intersection of design thinking, civic innovation practices, and community organizing. Some of these projects included co-creating a social impact institute at Harvard University focused on improving the public education system, devising a strategic plan with the City of New York that bridged the technology industry with underserved communities, and developing strategic programming within the United Nations on sustainable tourism practices.

Additionally, Scott worked at the award-winning design agency IDEO for 6 years as an organizational and systems designer. This work focused on helping organizations of all shapes, sizes, and industries transform themselves into more design-led and innovative organizations.

In his spare time, Scott guest lectures at NYU and Parsons on topics such as: Design Thinking for Social Impact, Design Research, and Storytelling.