Getting her hands dirty is what it's about for Zoey Kroll. As information architect and partner at CivicActions, she acts as translator between clients and developers as they wend their way toward the ultimate user experience. Coming from the non-profit world, Zoey understands why these organizations need to move from sharing with like-minded souls to embracing a global reach; it was a stint at Deloitte Consulting that gave her the expertise needed to tell a story in a clear, concise and compelling way.

A recurring theme in Zoey's work is how to move an audience from passive viewing to engaged activism. Realizing that visitors to the WITNESS Project might well find the site's documentation of human rights violations disturbing, she crafted a transition to positive engagement that allowed users to join groups, sign petitions and RSVP for events. Working with the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), which employs legal means to advance reproductive freedom worldwide, she considered the perspective of myriad users. The resulting site is less lawyerly, more captivating and far more effective. A growing area of work for Zoey is the “gov 2.0” phenomenon, or citizen participation using the global web; it was CivicActions that helped pioneer this movement with Dennis Kucinich's first Presidential campaign in 2004.

Connecting dirt to technology is a personal passion for Zoey and she does so, literally, as an urban gardener and founder of the Pocket Seed Library, a seed-sharing library that sprouts in the real and virtual worlds. Metaphorically speaking, Zoey seeks to connect the grounded, daily physical experience with the virtual experience and champions groups such as EcoTuesday, which are doing just that.