Hi! I’m a generalist on the executive office, where I work on M&E, data, and other projects. I used to work on the EA Global team at CEA, and before that I did economic consulting. I was born and raised in Hong Kong 🇭🇰.
Think I’m making a mistake? Want to give me feedback? Here’s my admonymous. You can also give feedback for me directly to my manager, Oscar Howie.
A rule of thumb that I follow for generating data visualizations: One story = one graph
The best visualizations are extremely simple and easy to read: e.g. a line or bar chart that tells you exactly what you care about
If you are struggling to figure out what to visualize, zoom out and ask yourself: what story are you trying to tell? Once you have clarity on that, figure out the simplest way to illustrate this.
If you have multiple stories to tell, make multiple graphs :)
Some made up stories and solutions:
Total engagement hours steadily went down over this year = You want a line graph of engagement over the year, and possibly you want to smooth your data out to show the trend line: e.g. graph the rolling 7 day average over time, or include a trend line.
Engagement really spiked on May 1, 2025 = You want a line graph of engagement per day, zoomed out far enough to show how it’s changed over time, and maybe add a labelled vertical line on May 1
Engagement this giving season is much stronger than last year = You want to plot two lines: engagement per day in 2025 over giving season, plus the equivalent engagement per day in 2024. Here, the comparison is the story you want to tell, so you want to make sure your 2025 and 2024 data are apples to apples.
Sharing communication advice a few colleagues have found helpful.