Art VanZuiden

The Problem

Resumes compress an entire career, set of experiences, and accomplishments into a single file. For most people, that file doesn't come close to showing their real value. On top of that, tailoring resumes and cover letters for every application burns a serious amount of time. There was no good place to show the full picture, and no way to do it quickly in the middle of a pitch or networking conversation.

The Insight

The real problem wasn't just the format. It was control. Job seekers had no say over their professional presence online, no way to show depth beyond a page limit, and no tool that worked both in an application and in person. The non-obvious move was treating the portfolio as three things at once: a career hub, a digital business card you can pull up mid-pitch, and a living online presence the user actually owns.

The Build

ufolio is an online presence, resume hub, and job application toolset built into one platform. Users build out a full profile that holds their career history, college experience, and project portfolio. Every resume gets a ufolio QR code that employers can scan to go deeper on the candidate in one quick action. The goal is to turn a flat application into a conversation starter. Employers scan the link and land on a profile that shows the work behind the person, not just the titles.

The Outcome

The Problem

Conversations about the institution were regularly carrying inaccurate numbers. Staff would cite figures in meetings that didn't match what the institution reported to the state regulator. That mismatch mattered. What gets reported to the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB) gets verified, and apportionment flows from it. When internal and external numbers didn't line up, it created confusion and eroded trust in the data. The root cause was usually different source systems or different interpretations of the same definition. There was no single place to go to settle the question.

The Insight

The fix wasn't a dashboard. It was starting at the institution's own public truth. The numbers reported to the state were correct, but the logic behind them lived in COBOL, buried in legacy systems and hard to trace. The insight was that if you could reverse-engineer that logic, term by term, you could build something anyone could check against. Every metric needed a definition, a data source, the relevant data elements, and the SQL that reproduced the verified answer. That way, internal conversations could finally be grounded in the same number the regulator saw.

The Build

The project is the Institutional Factbook, a live SQL environment where every metric is reconciled to the ICCB-reported line. To capture the underlying logic, an agentic validation loop was built. It was given a goal (the target ICCB metric), the database schema, and the ERP manual. It ran aggregate queries iteratively until the output matched the known reported figures. That process reverse-engineered the decisions and logic that the legacy COBOL had been encoding for years. Each metric in the Factbook now carries a term, a definition, its data source, the relevant elements, and the validated SQL. It is not just a number. It is a traceable, reproducible answer.

The Outcome

The Problem

Most kids her age have to wait until they're old enough for a workers permit before they can earn real money. That meant sitting on the sidelines while a whole neighborhood full of dog owners needed help. The standard options, babysitting, chores, dish washing, felt like a dead end too. A lot of that work is already being automated away. She needed something real, something that could grow with her.

The Insight

The fix wasn't waiting for the permit. It was finding a model where a parent present on the walk made the whole thing legal and legitimate right now. That one realization unlocked everything. Dog walking in the community became a real business, not a someday plan. And the neighborhood actually wanted it.

The Build

The site is built on Django and Python, with a fully automated booking flow so neighbors can book a walk without anyone having to pick up the phone. His daughter logs in to manage her available days and block off exceptions. When a booking comes in, email alerts keep both sides in the loop. The whole thing runs at pupCommute.com and handles the scheduling end to end.

The Outcome