LAYC Career Academy was looking to upgrade its website and, like most nonprofit organizations, it did not have a large budget to make this happen. Luckily, Carla Briceno, the Co-Founder and CEO of Bixal, a growing communications, design and technology firm based in Fairfax, VA, was there to help. Carla and her husband, Jose, have grown Bixal from the ground up over the last 12 years and now have an amazing team of over 90 digital strategists, user experience professionals, visual designers, and technologists. When asked why Carla volunteered to develop the new website for the school, she replied, “Although Bixal is a for profit company, it has a strong focus on supporting projects with a positive social impact, so an opportunity to be of service to the Career Academy just made sense.”
The project was led by Sofia Briceno, Carla and Jose’s daughter, who is now a senior in high school. Sofia took the lead on analyzing the Career Academy’s goals and objectives for the site, developing the information architecture, configuring the website, and working with the Career Academy team to organize content and migrate the content into the new site.
Sofia benefited tremendously from the opportunity to get hands-on experience in web design, content strategy and WordPress. Additionally, she became proficient in collaborating with clients and understanding their goals through working with the Career Academy team. Carla was able to provide support and guidance and they were both able to draw upon the expertise of other Bixal team members to develop an intuitive and user-friendly experience. Sofia is thinking about pursuing a career in multimedia and documentary film-making so this was a great opportunity for her to gain hands-on experience in user interface and web design.
The Career Academy benefited tremendously from the project. The school now has a beautiful new website that has enabled Career Academy to better reach students, families, internship partners, and donors. This would not have been possible without the help of Sofia and Bixal.