Team Biographies

Eric Leland has spent the last 20 years working with local, state and federal government, transit agencies and progressive organizations tackling online and offline technology challenges. As the founder and director of Leland Design, Eric focuses on strategic technology planning, website and database planning, development, and implementation for entities including the US Department of Labor, the City of San Francisco, progressive health and human services organizations, human rights groups, and environmental advocacy groups. Eric served as the director of TechCommons at TechSoup.org, one of the nation's most comprehensive nonprofit technology assistance organizations. Eric directed technology activists seeking solutions to systemic nonprofit technology issues, leveraging the latest online community tools to engage nonprofits and solution providers to contribute to lasting solutions.

Eric currently serves as a board member with Trout Unlimited, and served on the board of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network and the Addiction Technology Transfer Center, and and as a member of the Tech Underground and the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network.

Jason wrote his first computer program in the sixth grade, designed and built a computer before finishing high school, and then headed to MIT to study... molecular biology. (Molecular biology makes sense when you think about DNA as “programming code,” and recombinant DNA technology as the means to program organisms.) 

After receiving his PhD from the University of California, San Francisco in Biomedical Sciences, Jason's continued interest in programming led him back into the fast-paced field of computers. (Biological organisms being too slow.) The rise of cloud-based content frameworks, including CMS and CRM, created in irresistible opportunity to help everyone “program” via the internet. Jason has subsequently become an expert in developing, integrating, and deploying these technologies to solve a wide variety of client needs.

Jason lives in Palo Cedro, California with his wife Irene. When he is not working on ways to make technology easier and more helpful, Jason enjoys entertaining friends with cooking, cocktails, and endless nerdly conversation.

Beth is an experienced project & client manager and website administrator, with a keen eye focused on team progress and quality, while helping to keep projects on time and budget.

Beth is instrumental in evaluating system design and engineering approaches to make sure our team is considering the best options available for each use case when building out web based technologies. Her eye for detail, and ability to quickly arrive at common-sense workflows to solve editorial tasks is critical to building systems that can be easily adopted by our clients, and to remain sustainable over many years.

Often working behind the scenes, Beth helps to provide website configuration and to organize multiple streams of communications and requirements into a process that works for all stakeholders involved. Beth is a “regular person” who tests all of our tools for quality, including functionality, usability and presentation.

Tyler has worked in web development for almost 20 years on everything from configuring server hardware to graphic design. As head of our development team, he prefers to work on the trickier parts of our projects, ensuring that our solutions are both robust as well as easy to maintain. He also helps develop the site architecture, parsing client requirements into a system that can account for future needs. Whenever possible, he prefers to use existing tools that have been thoroughly vetted by the community and weaves them together with surgically applied code. He has a natural talent for quickly parsing complex problems and building strong, sustainable solutions. He masters obscure legacy software quickly, providing invaluable service to our many projects involving migration from outdated systems. His work is focused on sustainability, as he builds straightforward and easy-to-maintain solutions on robust frameworks, ensuring his solutions remain strong for many years.

He also enjoys practicing typography on our websites, ensuring that proper conventions are being followed and that information is being conveyed both clearly and beautifully. 

Tyler lives in Northern California with his wife and daughters.