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Stanley Hopkins.
02Case studies

Complex work, made workable.

How I manage implementation across a national technology platform, training and technical assistance, and community capacity-building work.

01Government Technology / Implementation

Scaling a National Government Technology Platform

As a Senior Program Manager at Impact Justice, I lead program implementation and user enablement for the PREA Resource Center’s Online Audit System (OAS), a national DOJ-supported technology platform used in the PREA audit process.

Context

As work moved from familiar paper-based processes into OAS, users needed support, training, and trust in the digital workflow.

My role

I grew from frontline technical support into senior program leadership across training, UAT, escalations, operations, and implementation.

What changed

I helped mature support, training, usability feedback, and team processes as the platform became an established national system.

Context / challenge

OAS launched before I joined in 2019 and became required for its intended users in 2022, a major factor in adoption. Rising case and audit volume made dependable support processes essential.

My role

I make day-to-day decisions across support operations, facility escalations, training, team processes, scheduling, and routine field communication. My work centers on program implementation and user enablement, rather than conducting PREA audits; vendor contract and budget ownership sit elsewhere.

Scope of responsibility

  • Program operations & implementation planning
  • Requirements, testing & releases
  • Training & technical assistance
  • Change communications & field readiness
  • Federal, technical & user coordination
  • Staff leadership & issue escalation

Impact at a glance

Users trained
1,000+
Team members within OAS management scope
4
Program operations and user support
National

The OAS and related program team grew from 2 to 4 staff during my tenure. My management scope includes up to 2 formal direct reports at one time. I contributed frontline user and implementation perspective to improvements in workflow clarity, information presentation, and report readability and formatting, including overly lengthy output.

How I approach the work

From priorities to implementation in the field.

Plan around the work users need to do

I turn program requirements, recurring support questions, and field experience into implementation priorities. In UAT and testing, I identify bugs, confusing workflows, and features that do not work as intended for users. I bring those findings to program and development teams with context about how people use the system.

Coordinate delivery across teams

I work with DOJ and PMO stakeholders, PREA Resource Center leadership, auditors, agencies, facilities, and development partners. I coordinate testing, release readiness, issue resolution, and follow-through across teams with different priorities and reporting lines.

Manage change beyond the release

For DOJ-approved substantive updates to the PREA audit instrument and auditor handbook, I develop and manage the implementation communication and training strategy: audiences, sequencing, frequency, format, materials, trainer responsibilities, and field readiness. I also coordinate timely guidance about outages, releases, downtime, and operational changes. Substantive federal decisions and certain national communications follow DOJ and organizational approval pathways.

Enable people and improve operations

I help expand OAS training beyond live webinars into tailored sessions, recordings, how-to videos, dedicated resources, and individual support appointments. Targeted training and self-service resources have helped reduce recurring questions while giving users more ways to get help. I strengthen team processes and support capacity as case and audit volume grows, maintaining a strong service orientation.

The implementation cycle

  1. Prioritize

    Program requirements & field needs

  2. Coordinate

    Teams, dependencies & readiness

  3. Implement

    Testing, releases & communications

  4. Learn

    Training, support & operational feedback

Leadership takeaway

Technology adoption is rarely just a technology problem. It takes program and project management that connects requirements, delivery, communications, and training to the way people actually use a system.

02Housing & Reentry / Technical Assistance

Building Capacity Through Housing & Reentry Technical Assistance

As a Senior Program Manager at Impact Justice, I support Housing Lab technical assistance across different engagements. One workstream provides intensive capacity-building support to two funded community-based organizations; another supports communities exploring local adaptation of the Homecoming Project's home-sharing model for people returning home from incarceration. I bring years of training and technical assistance experience from the PREA Resource Center to this broader portfolio.

Context / challenge

Community organizations bring deep expertise and trusted relationships. The management challenge is to structure distinct technical-assistance engagements across multiple partners and workstreams without replacing the local knowledge that makes the work effective.

My role

I support implementation across Housing Lab workstreams, coordinating Impact Justice colleagues, external coaches, facilitators, grantee organizations, and other stakeholders where appropriate. I structure activities, manage timelines and deliverables, and coordinate decisions and follow-through. In Homecoming Project-related work, I contribute training, technical assistance, and stakeholder coordination to help communities assess local adaptation of an established model.

At a glance

Community-based grantee organizations in one workstream
2
Combined grantee awards supported in that workstream
$250K
Grantees, coaches, facilitators & internal teams
Multi-partner
Planning, milestones, deliverables & implementation
End-to-end

Scope: the two organizations and $250K in combined awards describe one workstream within the broader Housing Lab portfolio. My role is technical assistance and implementation support; grantmaking and funding control sit elsewhere.

How I approach the work

Program management in service of organizational capacity.

Structuring implementation

For the grantee workstream, I turn organizational assessments and priorities into theories of change, technical assistance plans, milestones, and deliverables. Across Housing Lab engagements, I keep parallel timelines and dependencies visible while adapting the work to each organization’s context and knowledge.

Coordinating a multi-partner initiative

I coordinate community organization leaders, coaches, facilitators, consultants, and Impact Justice staff as each project requires. I track commitments and deliverables, surface issues to leadership, and adjust sequencing when capacity or timing changes. I also align distributed contributors and subject-matter experts across time zones, bringing their inputs together into coherent training resources rather than just scheduling their participation.

Turning learning into practice

In the grantee workstream, I connect coaching, peer learning, and facilitation to each organization's implementation needs, using feedback to inform the next phase. Participant feedback has pointed to staff growth, practical tools, and lessons organizations can carry forward. In related Homecoming Project work, I help develop and deliver training on the home-sharing model, its core components, processes, data, and implementation lessons so organizations can better assess whether and how it fits their own context.

One project, end to end

For a multi-day site visit in the grantee workstream, I coordinated participants, pre-work, facilitator preparation, scheduling, and travel against a fixed calendar. Grantee teams, coaches, and facilitators came together for workshops, including a strategic case-making and fundraising session. The visit advanced a broader technical assistance plan.

The engagement model

I plan each engagement with the organization and adjust the work as needs change.

  1. Assess

    Understand organizational needs & context

  2. Plan

    Translate priorities into a structured TA approach

  3. Support

    Coordinate coaching, facilitation & peer learning

  4. Implement

    Move strategy into organizational practice

  5. Learn

    Capture progress, lessons & next steps

Leadership takeaway

Strong technical assistance should leave an organization better equipped to solve future problems, not dependent on the person providing assistance.

03Training / Program Delivery

Scaling Training & Technical Assistance for a National Program

Building training and technical assistance that helps people move from complex requirements and technology to confident implementation in practice. This has been a significant part of my work for years through the PREA Resource Center and the Online Audit System, where I manage significant portions of a national training and technical assistance portfolio serving auditors, agencies, facilities, and other program users.

Context / challenge

Federally certified auditors, correctional agencies, facilities, and program staff bring different levels of familiarity with the requirements and the technology. They need training they can use in their day-to-day work, with practical support when questions come up. That takes planning and follow-through across sessions, resources, and individual assistance.

My role

I treat training as an implementation system I manage, not a presentation I give. My role has included planning and delivering national training, improving the training model over time, developing and contributing to learning modules and resources, supporting auditor training including field-based sessions, training users on OAS, providing technical assistance as people apply what they have learned, and feeding recurring questions and implementation challenges back into future training and program improvements.

At a glance

Users trained
1,000+
National training sessions annually
~30
Auditors, agencies, facilities & program users
Multiple audiences
Planning, content, delivery, TA & improvement
End-to-end

Managing the program

I plan the work across audiences, formats, contributors, and changing requirements.

Portfolio planning

I identify audience needs, training priorities, and recurring topics, then match each to the right format. A release, a requirements change, and a new user's first time with the system call for different support. Webinars, tailored sessions, recordings, how-to videos, dedicated resources, and individual appointments give users more than one way to learn.

Project management

Each training cycle is a project: schedules, content development, contributors, technology, materials, deadlines, and communications. I coordinate those pieces so sessions happen on time and the field knows what to expect before, during, and after.

Learning design

Federal requirements, program processes, and system workflows are complex by nature. My job is to translate them into practical learning experiences: clear sequences, worked examples, and guidance people can follow while doing the work.

Delivery & facilitation

I lead national webinars and support training for auditors, agencies, facilities, and other users, including field-based sessions. I use questions from those sessions to improve future training and support.

Technical assistance

Training ends; implementation continues. I help users move from general instruction to applying requirements, workflows, and the system in their own situations, which is where the most useful questions surface.

Continuous improvement

Recurring questions, support patterns, surveys, participant comments, and stakeholder feedback show where training is working and where it is not. I use that evidence to revise content and formats. Feedback and repeat attendance have been consistently positive, while targeted resources have helped reduce recurring support questions.

Technology & learning

Training is also a technology question. I have helped develop training modules and learning resources, and helped select and implement technology for auditor training. Working with the team, I connect content, delivery method, technology, audience needs, and ongoing support into a repeatable, multi-format learning function.

Training as change management

For substantive DOJ-approved updates to the PREA audit instrument and auditor handbook, I develop and manage the implementation communication and training strategy. That includes audiences, sequencing, frequency, formats, content, scripts, trainer responsibilities, and field guidance. Final substantive decisions and certain national communications follow DOJ approval.

I coordinate the training and guidance that help affected users put approved changes into practice.

The training cycle

Field questions and support patterns inform what we offer next.

  1. Understand

    Identify audience needs & implementation challenges

  2. Translate

    Turn complex requirements into practical learning

  3. Design

    Build the right content, format & resources

  4. Deliver

    Facilitate learning & technical assistance

  5. Support

    Help users apply learning in practice

  6. Improve

    Feed questions and experience back into the program

The through line

I brought years of national training and technical assistance work to the Housing Lab, where I now plan support with community organizations and adjust it based on what they need in practice.

Leadership takeaway

Training is not an event at the end of implementation. Managed well, it is the system that makes implementation possible, and it deserves the same rigor as any other part of a program.

The next conversation

Let's talk about what's next.

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