About Greg Palmer

Hi, I'm Greg Palmer, the editor of CitizeNYC and an independent web strategy consultant. What's that mean? I spend a lot of time analyzing and improving websites so your customers are more satisfied and you can increase the return on investment of your website. I focus on customer experience, product strategy, and helping organizations find their authentic voice in social media.

I live in New York but am willing to travel most anywhere to meet interesting clients and take on challenging projects. When I'm not consulting for clients, I collaborate with great people on a variety of projects that use the internet to improve civic life, government, politics, and journalism.

Before I started working independently, I was the Director of Web Communications for the NYC Department of Education, which is one of the largest employers in the country. I led improvements in user experience that increased the reach of the website so that over 1.2 million students, families, and employees visit each month and generate 150+ million page views per year. Occasionally I blog about specific projects there, but the short version is that I was the primary business owner for the website, intranet, search engine, e-mail marketing, and social media operations.

I got my start working on the web in a few places. My first full time job after graduate school was as the Technology Advisor to Chairman Henry Waxman at the U.S. House of Representatives' Oversight and Government Reform Committee. My focus in Congress was to lead the way in providing realtime information about Committee hearings, investigations, and legislative markups. We helped popularize live video streaming and realtime posting of witness testimony, statements, and evidentiary exhibits in order to bring investigative hearings to life and increase government transparency.

During graduate school, I founded Keystone Politics, a site that tracked Pennsylvania politics. I went to Lehigh University and have two degrees in political science. During graduate school, my research and writing focused heavily on public law, the judiciary, and the U.S. Constitution - specifically, the methods of constitutional interpretation used by the Supreme Court. I was also interested in Congress, political history, and the interactions between government and political science as a discipline, but haven't had time to research those formally. I like to meet new people, so let's talk more - jgpalmer@gmail.com.