Role: Project Manager | Product Owner
The Minneapolis People Search is a high-traffic genealogy application and one of the most visited tools on the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) website, generating nearly one million views annually. Designed to support historical and genealogical research, the application allows users to search across a suite of rich datasets—including birth and death records, the Gold Star Roll, WWI bonus records, and more.
Built on a flexible Svelte framework, the application is CMS-agnostic and fully portable, with both the front and back end designed to easily accommodate new datasets. Users benefit from an expanded set of filters and search fields, as well as the ability to comment directly on individual records, promoting community engagement and historical discourse.
I served as Project Manager for the rebuild of the application, leading a cross-functional team of in-house developers and designers. The project involved close collaboration with a third-party development partner, internal Business Applications developers, and key stakeholders from the Library and Collections departments.The final product delivers a user-tested, accessibility-compliant interface that significantly improves the user journey while offering enhanced search and filtering capabilities. Rebuilt for performance and ease of use across platforms, Minneapolis People Search now stands as a scalable, future-proof tool supporting public access to Minnesota’s rich historical archives.