Jazmyn Latimer

Jazmyn Latimer

Website: https://www.jazmynlatimer.com/
Twitter: @JazmynLatimer

Who is Jazmyn Latimer?

“I believe that everyone has the right to healthcare, food, assistance, opportunity, dignity, and freedom. The work I do is in service of making this a reality, at scale, using the tools of design and technology.

I have been a multidisciplinary designer and qualitative researcher for 8 years. I build digital products designed to improve services and influence systems change, using human centered design. My focus has been making sure the promise of government services and policies match the realities on the ground.

Currently, I’m working on redesigning the way government administers safety net benefits, like food, cash assistance, childcare, and healthcare to families in need. We recently launched Pandemic EBT to over 3 million families in California and Minnesota. Pandemic EBT was a disaster relief program administered by state agencies that provided extra food benefits for students who typically rely on free and reduced-price meals but couldn’t access them while schools were closed during Covid-19.

I spent 4 years looking at the ways that technology and design can restore opportunities for those impacted by our criminal justice system. During that time, I co-founded Clear My Record at Code for America, a project that automates the process of clearing old marijuana convictions from one’s criminal record so that they qualify for jobs, housing, and other opportunities. Our work on Clear My Record has lead to over 85,000 marijuana convictions being automatically removed from people’s records across California, and many more, soon. Over 15,000 people no longer have a criminal record at all because of this work.

Read more about Clear My Record on Fast Company, The New York Times, NPR, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, BBC, StateScoop, and Afrotech. (Can you tell how proud I am?!)

Now, I’m the Service Design Director at Code for America, where I direct our design and research teams who work on a portfolio of projects (GetCalFresh, Get Your Refund, Integrated Benefits, and Clear My Record). These projects aim to fix the implementation of government services and policies and improve the way the public accesses food assistance, healthcare, earned income tax credits, and criminal justice reform. Watch my team’s panel discussion about our work from SF Design Week 2020.

I’m always open to new, compelling ways to use my skills to make the world a more just, less frustrating, place. And, I love to talk – I’ve done over 30 public talks about my work. So, let’s chat!” (source)

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