I changed the internet forever, and for the first time, I can show you how. 🥹
Over the past year, I have been quietly engineering a shift in how the future “sees” us. If you follow me on other platforms, you’ll see that I’ve been posting about public events and other thought leadership work, but the actual thing I was building was very much behind-the-scenes until now. Debating whether things were AI slop or not definitely dominated most discussions I saw around AI this past year, and while that was going on, I was building the infrastructure to pioneer what I call “Restorative Digital Justice”.
Here’s a short, 2-minute video that summarizes it all!:
Ultimately, this stems from knowing what it’s like to feel invisible in the data. As a Cambodian+American woman in tech, I never had a mentor who looked like me or had my lived experiences. I’ve always felt a responsibility to build the community I needed. Looking back at my body of work across trend forecasting for B2B shifts to e-commerce, growth hacking, biomedical research, and Zero-to-Launch software product engineering for building equitable data, I realize it has uniquely positioned me to build this visibility into code that governs the quality of life for my community.
The Invisible Crisis:
Algorithmic Erasure
When we think about the future of tech, we have to talk about Large Language Models (LLMs). Think of an LLM as a “Digital Know-It-All” that has absorbed the entire internet to inform its predictions, and yet it cannot know what it cannot see.
The Risk of Algorithmic Erasure
Imagine what happens when the future is built on data that doesn’t see you.
We’re currently witnessing a silent crisis which I’m calling Algorithmic Erasure. As the world moves from human-led search to Large Language Models (LLM/GEO), communities that lack high-authority digital data are being written out of the future. Essentially, if your community’s data isn’t “machine-readable,” then how is AI supposed to synthesize it? It doesn’t know what it doesn’t know, it can’t process you, so it simply “disappears” you.
For many, especially underinvested populations like our Asian Pacific Islander Native Hawaiian (APINH) community, the data has been proven time and time again to not exist in a machine-readable format. When LLMs run on existing data to inform predictions and services, being “invisible” in the code leads to a high-risk gamble for ESG leaders and civic innovators alike. We become deprioritized.
Status Quo? Status No.
Sitting as a bystander in the Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) era is no longer an option.
In business and governance, when you miss out on this rare window to build, you not only lose your competition edge but also your agency. When you’re a human, losing agency is everything.
My “special sauce” is preventing this erasure through Search-to-LLM Digital Infrastructure and deploying trust-first frameworks for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).
Why This Work is Ahead of Its Time
I actually predicted this shift years ago, releasing a GEO framework nearly a year before the public launch of Google’s Gemini AI Overview. At the time, I called it “AI SEO” since the term GEO didn’t exist yet. I had to explain to business people that the goal was not to chase clicks but to build for a future they could not yet fathom–architecting for citations, but not in the traditional sense. I completely understand how that can be confusing, and sometimes, the problem with seeing an emerging industry before it’s adopted is waiting for everyone else to value the work. The ones who do will own the future.
What keeps me up at night is how much of our quality of life is governed digitally. I constantly think about what happens when equity is not part of that equation.
On the bright side, what’s exciting about waiting for the world to catch up is that we’re in a rare moment where you can still claim “Digital Sovereignty” for high impact before all these AI models lock in what their “Ground Truth” is based on.
The Case Study:
Project BRIDGE
For the last year, I’ve served as a FUSE Executive Fellow for the City of Albuquerque in our Office of Equity & Inclusion. My mandate was to help launch the first-ever Office of Asian Pacific Islander Native Hawaiian (APINH) Affairs in the state of New Mexico.
From the beginning, I knew I could deploy Data With Style™ frameworks to pioneer a new model for civic data. This was the perfect “blue ocean” opportunity to not only prove that the impact is possible but also accelerate progress on a bigger mission so close to my heart.
Our APINH community’s 200-year history literally did not exist in a way that AI could understand. The challenge was severalfold: confirming data that did not exist across fragmented resources, then figuring out how to build (and rebuild) trust in order to then get the buy-in and partnership to build that data so that it could be the trusted, central, ground truth that powers Restorative Digital Justice.
This nuanced work changes AI dead ends to valuing civic visibility and routing people to our APINH digital third place online as a central resource. That’s also why I call it “Trust-First Civic GEO”, because we are not doing things TO community; we need to let things be community-driven in order for it to be both sustainable and a trusted, public good.
How GEO Works Example
The Proof:
Shorty Awards & Technical Excellence
This has officially moved out of “theory” territory because I proved that it’s possible for public goods to proactively mitigate risks against Algorithmic Erasure. Through the applications of my expertise, Project BRIDGE: Trust-First Civic GEO has been nominated for the 18th Annual Shorty Awards in the inaugural GEO category.
We are the only civic entry in the world for this category. This nomination validates that local government can (and should) be a visionary leader in deep technology. In order for us to even qualify for this new category, it means we must have done the work ahead-of-its time, and that feels really good to share.
Albuquerque, New Mexico IS the tech and equity hub of the Southwest, and maybe people will now realize it. ✨
Through this future-thinking project of launching a digital third place for our APINH community at cabq.gov/apinh, we also deployed the first-ever WCAG-compliant Able Player video system on the entire cabq.gov platform, ensuring accessibility is the technical prerequisite for AI Readiness. What makes me really hopeful is how this project truly turned into a shared success story with so many champions from different areas. We really came together.
Without our Trust-First Civic GEO lens, our APINH community risked fragmentation for possibly more generations to come. Now, we get to celebrate resilient algorithmic trust being community-driven. When I talk about “seats at the table”, this is what I mean. Because that table didn’t even exist for us to pull up seats to, we decided to build a new table and new seats together.
All of this was from scratch: relationships, data models, products, platforms, and so much more.
And keep in mind that we did all of this in less than a year in local government. Yes, we did that! How? Because we aligned the right partners who understood the future vision. We do no great things alone, and this was capacity-building at the highest level. None of this happened by chance–this was successful because we worked as an asynchronous team aligned towards a bigger goal and with the trust and support of our leadership to make it happen.
Now, we’ve proved this works, and let’s keep it going!
What’s Next for the Signal
As I wrap up my fellowship this April, I am shifting my focus toward helping mission-oriented companies navigate this “blue ocean” of GEO and equity. The window to build responsible AI evolution is open, but it won’t stay that way for long.
I’m currently workshopping what to call my mailing list. So far, I’m going with “The Signal”. The intention is to build a network of people who are interested in the emerging industry of GEO and how we can use it as Tech-For-Good. In addition to original thought-provoking content, written by me–a human–I’m creating free resources in real time that I’ll be giving away to subscribers.
The Summary:
From Insight to Architecture
The era of “Search-to-LLM” is here. You can either be a bystander or the architect.
- SEO was about being found by humans.
- GEO is about being contextually synthesized by the machines that humans trust.
- Restorative Digital Justice ensures that this synthesis is equitable.
Let Me Help You Architect the Future of Your Organization
As I conclude my FUSE Fellowship this April, I am opening select partnerships for ESG-driven companies and startups:
- Fractional C-Suite (CMO/CSO/CPO): Guiding the transition into responsible AI evolution.
- Startup Advisory: Navigating the “Blue Ocean” of GEO and machine-readability.
- Thought Leadership: Available for keynote panels and executive interviews.
Let’s engineer a visible future. 📩 Contact: [partnerships]@datawithstyle.com
What Do You Think?
Which of these areas is your organization most concerned about: Technical AI Readiness or Ethical Data Governance? Let’s discuss in the comments.
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