Cait Dyche

Across workshops, workrooms, and the wilds of the web, I design environments where knowledge becomes participatory, usable, and meaningful to the communities it serves.

I bring together research, content, and learning design to help people engage with ideas—and with each other—in ways that lead to real understanding and action.

I care deeply about clarity, connection, and building things that people can actually use.

And if we have a few laughs in the process, even better ;)

Photo by Māra Zukure on Pexels

Case Study:

NPS
Network to Freedom

Modernizing Federal Knowledge Infrastructure & Media Strategy

The Challenge

The National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom (NTF) manages a sprawling ecosystem of over 700 member sites. During its 25th anniversary, the program faced a dual challenge: activating a diverse network of community partners for a global digital campaign (International Underground Railroad Month) while ensuring all contributed materials met strict federal standards for historical accuracy and digital accessibility.

The Solution

I led the "Takeover the Network" initiative, serving as the strategic link between federal oversight and community-level execution. I functioned as the central hub for asset ingestion and internal synchronization, ensuring that decentralized community voices were successfully integrated into the federal digital ecosystem.

FEDERAL PROGRAM COMPLIANCE & 508 ACCESSIBILITY

To maintain federal standing, every asset in the campaign had to meet Section 508 Compliance and WCAG 2.1 standards. I developed a quality assurance pipeline that screened partner-contributed media for alt-text integrity, color contrast, and captioning accuracy before public release.

Universal Compliance & QA Framework. I engineered this matrix to standardize the ingestion of partner-contributed media. By integrating Section 508 mandates with Plain Language standards, I ensured all assets were technically accessible for federal archives and cognitively accessible for a global audience.

OPERATIONAL MILESTONE & LIFECYCLE TRACKING

I recruited and onboarded 25+ community partners into a unified digital strategy. To manage the complexity of this multi-channel campaign, I maintained a high-level Project Lifecycle Tracker. This served as the "single source of truth" for internal program staff, allowing us to monitor the transition of partner contributions into finalized, compliant federal assets.

A project completion tracker used to monitor the lifecycle of digital assets and stakeholder milestones for a federal commemorative campaign.
Operational Synchronization Log. This tracker provided real-time visibility into project milestones, ensuring 100% on-time execution of the month-long federal campaign.

DIGITAL ASSEST MANAGEMENT & INTERNAL KNOWLEDGE ENABLEMENT

I managed the ingestion and structural organization of all digital assets submitted by decentralized partners for the 25th-anniversary archives. Beyond technical curation, I served as the primary link for internal knowledge enablement, ensuring program staff remained synchronized on archival milestones and asset availability.

    • Asset Governance: Standardized file naming conventions and metadata tagging to ensure all submitted media remained searchable and structured within federal digital systems.
    • Quality Assurance: Acted as the technical filter, auditing incoming media to ensure alt-text and captioning were integrated before assets were finalized for long-term storage.
    • Internal Enablement: Synthesized technical archival progress into structured internal updates, translating ingestion milestones into actionable reports to maintain organizational alignment.

    Internal Enablement & Knowledge Dissemination. Utilizing seasonal reporting to synchronize internal program staff on archival milestones and anniversary achievements.

      The Impact

      OPERATIONAL STANDARIZATION

      Developed "Campaign Kits" and ingestion workflows that allowed diverse partners to contribute to federal channels without technical friction.

      INTEGRITY

      Maintained 100% compliance with federal records and accessibility mandates (Section 508).

      NETWORK SYNCHRONIZATION

      Successfully synchronized 25+ independent organizations and internal program staff into a unified, compliant anniversary event.