Briana Ford is a civic designer, writer, and facilitator who helps organizations stop making decisions about people, without people. Through Dignity by Design — her community design studio — she brings the Margins Audit into rooms where power is made.
A diagnostic tool for structural harm. Three questions, applied rigorously, to reveal who a system is actually serving — and who it's leaving behind.
When a policy fails, when a service falls short, when a program ends — who absorbs the cost? Follow the harm.
What structural, institutional, or design barriers are preventing people from accessing what they need?
Were the people most affected by this decision in the room when it was made? If not — who was?
"Accountability is a precondition for collaboration — not an obstacle to it."— Briana Ford
Forthcoming 2026
How to rebuild civic infrastructure from the margins out
What does it look like to rebuild civic infrastructure from the margins out? In her forthcoming book, Briana Ford makes the case for a new kind of civic practice — one that treats community as infrastructure, accountability as design, and liberation as a policy goal.
Drawing on her work with Dignity by Design and the Margins Audit, Restoring the Commons offers both a diagnostic framework and a practical guide for civic practitioners, organizers, designers, and public servants who believe democracy can be redesigned.
Rooted in South Bay LA and in conversation with emerging governance models from across the country, this is a book for people who are tired of designing around harm — and ready to design toward liberation.
Get Notified When It DropsBriana Ford is a Civic Designer and Commons Strategist who works at the intersection of liberatory design, participatory design, and civic infrastructure. She is the founder of Dignity by Design — a community design studio built on the belief that the people most affected by a decision have the most to offer in solving it.
Her signature methodology, the Margins Audit, has been applied in nonprofit strategy sessions, community listening tours, and city-level planning processes across Los Angeles. It's a tool for making the invisible visible — and the structural, personal.
She holds board and leadership roles with the Mar Vista Family Center, Theater of Hearts, Junior League of Long Beach, and City Year LA. She is an incoming Community Impact & Partnerships Chair and a longtime volunteer with Lasagna Love.
She lives in Compton, where she crochets Hogwarts blankets and believes South Bay LA is one of the most underestimated civic laboratories in the country.
Read the Full StoryFacilitation, strategy, and design for organizations ready to stop designing around the people they serve.
A three-phase engagement — Diagnose, Design, Transfer — that maps gaps, co-creates solutions, and builds lasting internal capacity. Includes a Gap Report, Blueprint, and Handoff Kit.
$3,500 – $5,000
Deep community listening sessions that center the people most affected. We design the process together, then we go find out what's actually happening.
Interactive workshops on the Margins Audit, civic infrastructure, and participatory design for teams, conferences, and institutions ready to do the real work.