Application addendum for Content & Communications Lead at Recidiviz. This page is both an application and a portfolio piece -- built to demonstrate the skills this role requires.
Recidiviz builds technology to reduce incarceration through data-driven decision-making. I build technology to rebuild lives after incarceration through evidence-based tools. We are working the same problem from two sides.
I am formerly incarcerated. I spent a decade after that helping justice-impacted individuals rebuild their careers -- starting at a halfway house as an alum, then moving through sober living homes, treatment centers, jails, and prisons across Wisconsin. That practice became Steel Man Resumes, where I built AI-powered career tools grounded in neuroscience and desistance theory that are live and serving users today.
Simultaneously, I advise Justice Beacon Solutions on technology and digital strategy. JBS is creating an entirely new governance discipline -- Justice Decision Observability -- for AI in criminal justice. I built their website, governance portal, content strategy, and brand positioning from the ground up. I know how to tell stories about criminal justice and technology because I've been doing it across platforms that serve people on both sides of the wall.
Each of your core responsibilities maps directly to work I've already shipped. Not concepts. Working products, published content, and live platforms.
I own the editorial calendar and content strategy across three ventures. For Justice Beacon Solutions, I developed a category-creation content strategy that includes 24 DOI-registered governance standards, audience-specific landing pages (institutions, defense attorneys, researchers, journalists), and a press page with pre-approved quotes. I wrote the brand positioning analysis that diagnosed why a new category was being misunderstood and designed the deliverables-first communication strategy that fixed it.
For Steel Man Resumes, I built a 33,000-word design brief grounding every product decision in peer-reviewed behavioral science -- then translated that research into warm, accessible product copy that justice-impacted users actually engage with.
The Forge -- my AI career analysis tool -- is itself a storytelling engine. It transforms a justice-impacted person's fragmented work history into a coherent career narrative using McAdams' narrative identity theory and Maruna's desistance research. Every output uses redemption sequence framing (bad-to-good arcs that predict higher well-being).
The internal infrastructure exists: three voice registers (client, partner, observer) built into the codebase, audience-aware messaging that adapts the same story for the person using the tool, the case manager overseeing them, and the funder evaluating the program. I've been building the storytelling engine Recidiviz needs -- I've just been building it for a different product.
I manage reputation in a space where one wrong headline can destroy trust with both government partners and the communities they serve. For JBS, I wrote the strategic analysis recommending they decline a technology vendor partnership because it would compromise their independence -- the one asset that makes their governance work credible. I authored the CCJ bridge report, a strategic intelligence document mapping the Council on Criminal Justice's AI Task Force, identifying structural gaps, and positioning JBS to fill them.
I know when to be visible and when to stay quiet. In my Milwaukee coalition-building work, the operating principle is "show up as a resource, not a salesman." I've written proposals for six organizations, each tailored to their specific constraints, leadership, and budget -- not a mass blast, but targeted positioning.
I've built case studies that help partnership teams show new agencies what's possible. The JBS website includes audience-specific pages for institutions, defense attorneys, researchers, and journalists -- each reframing the same core value proposition for a different buyer. The Waukesha Resource Navigator is itself a case study: a county-level platform I built to demonstrate how AI triage can replace manual navigation, with 119 organizations mapped, 185 AI knowledge chunks, and government-grade security.
For JBS, I created a sample governance review (the Loomis CEGR) reconstructing a real Wisconsin Supreme Court case through the governance documentation framework -- a tangible artifact that transforms abstract methodology into something a corrections director can hold and imagine their facility's name on.
I ghostwrote JBS's founding response to the Council on Criminal Justice's AI framework -- a strategic memo positioning JBS as the execution layer for a national policy mandate. The piece opens: "What it does not provide is the infrastructure to deliver it. This is not a criticism. It is a structural observation." That voice -- precise, respectful, authoritative -- is Dr. Fleming's. I captured it.
I've written in multiple executive voices across platforms: press quotes ("Human oversight without documentation is accountability theater"), service descriptions using metaphor (The Microscope, The Map, The Radar), and brand positioning documents that define an entire venture's identity. I wrote my own brand bible -- 800+ lines governing voice, thesis, and content generation across three simultaneous ventures.
Here's the same feature -- a disclosure planning tool for justice-impacted job seekers -- described for three different audiences. This is real copy from a live product.
This voice-switching capability -- warm and direct for people navigating the system, methodological for practitioners, evidence-dense for evaluators -- is exactly what communicating Recidiviz's work to corrections leaders AND justice-impacted communities requires.
I don't have a degree. Here's what I have instead.
| You Require | I Bring |
|---|---|
| 7+ years content/comms/journalism | 9+ years creating narratives, brand strategy, and content systems for justice-impacted audiences |
| Navigate polarized environments | I navigate being justice-impacted while advising on AI governance for corrections systems. I know which stories build trust and which ones create risk. |
| Toggle marketing and comms modes | Brand bibles, AEO research, LinkedIn strategy (marketing) alongside CCJ policy memos, coalition proposals, government-facing platform builds (comms) |
| Humanize data/tech content | Built a 33K-word design brief translating neuroscience into product UX. Three voice registers in a single codebase. Research citations made warm. |
| Journalism/interview skills | CCJ Task Force organizational intelligence (15 members, 4 advisers, power mapping). Milwaukee coalition research (6 orgs, budgets, leadership, constraints). I find the story. |
| Multimedia production | 13 live web properties. Interactive AI platforms. Government-grade portals. HTML proposals. Video content strategy. This page. |
You defined what wild success looks like in year one. Here's specifically how I'd deliver it.
The angle: "The Narrative Gap -- Why Reentry Fails Before It Starts." The criminal justice system destroys narrative identity through incarceration (hippocampal atrophy, HPA axis dysregulation), then builds reentry programs that assume narrative capacity is intact. Every intake form, job interview, and parole hearing is a narrative test administered to people whose narrative infrastructure has been neurologically compromised.
This isn't theory. I built tools that solve it (The Forge uses affect labeling, redemption sequence framing, and scaffolded disclosure coaching). I can develop this into a presentation with pre-summit teaser content (blog post + LinkedIn series), the summit talk itself, and post-summit long-form (whitepaper or interactive case study). The content would position Recidiviz's data infrastructure as the evidence layer proving this intervention works at scale.
Corrections leaders only make the news for crises. I know this because I've built communications strategy for a governance organization that works directly with corrections agencies. The approach: find the corrections directors who are quietly doing innovative work with Recidiviz data, interview them to surface what's actually happening (not what the press assumes), and package those stories for industry publications where their peers read -- not mainstream media where the story gets weaponized.
I wrote JBS's positioning analysis diagnosing exactly this problem: the gap between what an organization actually delivers and what people think it delivers. The fix is deliverables-first communication. Show the output. Let the story earn its audience. I would apply the same framework to Recidiviz's state partnerships.
Selected live platforms demonstrating content strategy, technical execution, and audience-aware storytelling.
| Platform | What It Demonstrates |
|---|---|
| The Forge | AI career analysis with behavioral science narrative. Three audience voices. Trauma-informed UX. Live users. |
| The Refinery | 7-tool career dashboard. Progressive disclosure. Scaffolded complexity. Research-backed copy at every interaction point. |
| Justice Beacon Solutions | Category-creation content strategy. Audience-specific pages. Policy narrative. Thought leadership infrastructure. |
| The Midnight Garden | Consulting brand. Service positioning. Portfolio. About page that leads with lived experience. |
| Waukesha Resource Navigator | Government-serving platform. 119 orgs, AI triage, crisis-first UX. Built for people navigating the system. |
"Everyone is asking whether the algorithm is fair. Nobody is asking what happens to the person after the algorithm speaks."
I've spent nine years answering that question -- with tools, not theory.
Recidiviz has the data infrastructure to prove what works. I have the storytelling infrastructure to make people care. That's the combination that drives adoption in new states, earns trust from corrections leaders, and keeps the mission in front of the people who fund it.
I'm ready to do this work. I've been doing it.
Everything for this role, in one place.