BART Youth Engagement
BART Anime Mascots BARTtok BART Twitch BART Twitter/𝕏I'm San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit's first ever Youth Engagement Specialist, and I'm working on developing creative new ways to promote public transportation use in the Bay Area, especially among youth - a fast growing ridership demographic.
Jump to: Intro ✦ Rider Guides ✦ Anime Mascots ✦ TikTok ✦ Twitch Streams ✦ Awards
Keeping it Real. 
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Working with an entire generation that's more online than ever, with a different set of expectations and lived experiences, requires adapting to change — even if that means trying and piloting new things!
What I do combines my creative, technical, and community skills to directly:
- Put together events where young transit enthusiasts have their say!
- Create graphics that organize information into an easy-to-understand format!
- Work with artists to launch anime mascots!
- Make fun, educational videos for short and live video platforms!
- Explore potential options for youth engagement, and find ways to make it happen!
Below are some non-exhaustive highlights of some of the things I've worked on~ 
Rider Guides! 
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I created friendly, personalized visual communications for major events in the Bay Area, with a focus on growing ridership among youth & occasional riders. Dense in relevant information, these are designed to be re-shared to social media, group chats, and other platforms BART otherwise might not directly reach.
The growth of k-pop in recent years has created new opportunities to increase youth ridership!
This festival is popular with families, so information is tailored towards them.
This guide shows a parade route with the closest stations. (IG story version)
This League of Legends-inspired guide was designed for international tourists in mind.
This guide emphases the new transfer to the Muni Central Subway, in relation to existing lines.
A guide quickly put together for the Warriors NBA Championship parade.
The CRX guide is packed w/ easter eggs from popular anime and vtuber guests. This guide went viral, helping set an all-time Sunday ridership record at Berryessa, just behind the SF pride parades (as of September 2023!)
A version of the postcard given out at FanimeCon 2023, bringing awareness to local transit connections to new BART stations in the South Bay.
Anime Mascots #
I manage the BART Anime Mascots Project: an ongoing collaboration between BART, fans, and local digital artists! Building on top of the growing popularity of anime & East Asian pop culture in California, we worked with artists to design 4 original anime-style mascots inspired by BART!
Putting all this together developing tools and processes that enable governments to better work with freelance digital artists. The call for artists was modeled after artist alley convention applications, and we recieved nearly 500 responses. The mascots were launched at FanimeCon 2023, drawing the longest lines in the convention, and it was successful beyond anyone's imaginations!
Since FanimeCon, I helped organize a few events with the mascots, including tabling at other cons, and the Meet the Anime Mascots pop-ups. My main challenge now is taking all that momentum to create new content, art, merch, and interactive experiences featuring these mascots (...without stretching myself too thin 
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I also designed the giveaways, merch, and all the assets needed to make this happen:
Hello, #BARTTok! 
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One of the first things I worked on was a TikTok strategy that directly targeted the Gen Z demographic, a new audience BART has struggled to reach in the past. After just 3 months of creating fun and educational content, @SFBART has grown to become the largest local US transit agency TikTok account in engagements (views/likes!)
I am involved in strategy & video production for many of their videos published to TikTok & YouTube Shorts; in addition to the development of augmented reality (AR) TikTok Effects. The most rewarding part of this is building out the TikTok to the point where others are sharing how BART plays a role in their life.
We're just getting started, but you can check out new videos & effects as they go live on @SFBART's TikTok page! ️
#beattraffic #sf #bayareatransit #bayarea #barttok #traintok #fyp #comedy ♬ original sound - SFBART 
Twitch Livestreams! #
I've helped manage Twitch (+ TikTok LIVE) streams for BART, from planning to production. These streams bring together local content creators, institutions, experts, and of course, transit fans for a fun time~
For each stream I managed creator partnerships, designed promotional materials, coded overlays with interactive elements, helped with training/production, etc. I bring my streaming experience to the table and make magic happen with the limited resources that are available. 
For the first stream, we invited Yuuna & Synthion to decorate some cookies!
We partnered with SF Zoo & local streamer Ying to celebrate World Frog Day!
This is the tip of the iceberg! 
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I'm actively working on developing even more thoughtful and intentional ways to engage Bay Area youth, with the goals of:
- growing awareness
- building trust in public institutions
- creating new opportunities
- including youth in decision making processes
Please stay tuned! 
P.S. I have already won an award for my work so far~
