CivicActions

Owen Barton traveled halfway around the world to find CivicActions. At a small web shop in North Wales, he learned to manage a project from development to delivery, the essence of his role as engineering tech lead. After bouncing around between Africa and the U.S. as both teacher and student, he returned to his native England and spotted an ad for CivicActions. Now a partner at the firm, Owen's days are spent connecting clients to individual skill sets, a juggling act between the module developers, themers, flash and javascript programmers who are eager to make a difference.

As a technologist, Owen captures the functional specifications of a project and translates them into what is achievable and within budget. Alongside the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), he deployed a local-to-global solution for their “Shift in Action” web site that grew their membership exponentially. Considerable growth was also achieved for Just Cause, where Owen helped launch a social networking site that puts people at its center thanks to extensive user profile functionality. Where everyone's a scribe at Just Cause and member content drives the messaging, the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) is editorially-driven from the top. It was Owen's solution to multiple taxonomies that allowed CRR to present complex legal documents in a streamlined and accessible manner, leading to a fully-informed constituency.

Quick to give back, Owen is working with a California-based non-profit to build a network of global telescopes tasked with the continuous observation of space. More personal is the work he and his wife are doing to shed a national spotlight on the issue of VBAC (vaginal birth after Caesarean).