Virginia Hamilton

About Virginia Hamilton

Virginia is an experienced public policy expert, with deep knowledge of both content and process skills. She uses and teaches Design Thinking to improve public policy and program design, and practices and teaches facilitation. Virginia consults with the Partnership for Public Service, teaching Gov21 - an energizing and highly popular class for change makers in the federal government. At the Department of Labor, Virginia worked for the Secretary of Labor\'s office on issues of employee engagement and innovation. She is passionate about process literacy and design. She has worked with leaders in organizations to teach them how to collaborate, build partnerships, have important conversations, send the right messages, and get things done. She has been focused on practicing and teaching process skills, and design thinking for the last 20 years. At DOL, she spearheaded the Customer-Centered Design Initiative, which trained over workforce development professionals in HCD. She has worked with IDEO focused on using HCD to help the unemployed have better customer experiences and better outcomes.Virginia has an extensive network of people and organizations throughout the country, has served on many boards, advisory groups, and commissions. She is an accomplished public speaker. Her consulting work includes facilitation, strategic planning, meeting and event design, civic engagement, collaborative processes, large scale system change. She has spent her career in non-profits and as a public servant with the mission of making government work better for vulnerable populations, focused on skills, employment, and training. Always searching for ways to involve more people, bring participatory methods into projects and organizations, encourage creativity and joy, Virginia is a change agent who is willing to tell the truth to improve lives.

Experience

1. Senior Fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change and the Govlab

   The Burnes Center For Social Change

   Apr 2024 — Present

   I am working with the Burnes Center to support InnovateUS. I have an online Intro to HCD course and a number of workshops on the InnovateUS website. I am working with the team to further build the capacity of public servants in innovation and design.

Skills

• Workshop Facilitation
• Policy Analysis
• Politics
• Fundraising
• Community Engagement
• Volunteer Management
• Training
• Budgets
• Community Outreach
• Community Development
• Legislative Relations
• Research
• Strategy
• Faciilitation
• Program Development
• Team Building
• Teaching
• Event Management
• Capacity Building
• Proposal Writing
• Project Management
• Strategic Planning
• Staff Development
• Resume Writing
• Coaching
• Policy
• Strategic Partnerships
• Strategic Communications
• Process Improvement
• Non-Profits
• Economic Development
• Government
• Nonprofits
• Public Relations
• Public Speaking
• Event Planning
• Career Counseling
• Grant Writing
• Leadership
• Program Evaluation