About the Lab

The Work

Sleeping Bear Labs is my one-person civic tech workshop based in Kentucky. I build practical, plain-language tools for the public interest — tools that help people navigate complex systems, find accurate information, and understand data that affects their lives.

My background spans logistics operations, journalism, and hands-on software development. Journalism taught me how to explain hard things clearly. Logistics taught me how systems fail the people who depend on them. Software gives me a way to close the gap. That combination is the thread running through every project here.

The tools are small, focused, and built to run without accounts, logins, or proprietary dependencies. Everything is mobile-first and designed for the places and situations where people actually need it.

The Background

Before Sleeping Bear Labs, I co-founded Karate Body Records, an independent label that released work by nationally recognized artists including Pokey LaFarge, Joan Shelley, and Bonnie Prince Billy, distributed globally through Sony/The Orchard. The label ran from 2009 to 2019.