Bio.
Merici is the Child Tax Credit Implementation Lead for the US Digital Service. USDS is a team of digital pros based out of the White House and deployed to implementation, digital, and modernization projects across the federal government.
Merici is also the Co-Founder and former CEO of Ada’s List, a global community of womxn and non-binary people who work in technology. The Ada’s List mission is powerful and seeks change in existing, patriarchal and racist power structures; this mission has created a global movement of over 8,000 women to support one another and raise each other up.
Merici founded Ada’s List after moving to London from Washington, DC. In the States, she worked in digital on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and then moved to DC to work in the Obama administration. She set up the technology team for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a US regulatory body created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. As one of the first employees of the new agency, she worked for now-Senator Elizabeth Warren to develop the technology strategy for the agency. She strongly steered the strategy towards one of openness from the get go, building the agency on foundations of open source, open data and transparency. Their trailblazing vision set the standard for modern web services in the federal government. In parallel, she supported former United States CTO Todd Park (under the Obama administration) in his efforts to bring more women and people of color into technology at the federal level. She has been credited by Park as “being solely responsible for shifting our entire strategy around technology recruitment.”
Merici has extensive consulting experience; she served as a Client Engagement Lead at IDEO’s software platform and worked with global organisations (HP, Harvard, DB, and more) to help them become more innovation- and design-led. Additionally, she worked at Accenture/Fjord as a Director and led client transformation projects across design and technology. Merici helped clients transition from paper-based, siloed organisations through to identifying and launching new digital services based on user research.
Merici is a Trustee for the Centre for Homelessness Impact and was elected to serve as a school Governor at Millfields Community School in London.
My story.
I went to a one-room school in the Sandhills of Nebraska. Picture by Richard Olsenius.
I’m part Little House on the Prairie museum relic (who rides their horse to a one room school post 1895?), part random expat living in London. Who how what?
May 2, 1986 The Sand Hills of Nebraska. From ‘A Day in the Life of America’ by Richard Olsenius. Click image to read: 'Defining parenthood without parents'
Me and Elizabeth Warren - Reunion 2020. Click image to read: 'Warren For The Win'
Me and the boys on the ranch. Click image to read: 'How to raise an awesome human part 2'
Me and Dad at a cattle branding. Click image to read: 'How to raise an awesome human part 3'
Me and mom on Halloween. Click image to read: 'How to raise an awesome human part 1'
Me, my husband Dom and our two kids Dakota and Hopkins. Click image to read: 'Non-Traumatic Motherhood: A Non-Traumatic Manual'