Coaching
In my 12th year as a high school tennis coach.
Ron Bronson
Studies how technologychanges markets,institutions, andpublic life.
Ron Bronson is an assistant professor of practice in Urban Technology at the University of Michigan and founder of Vloora, where his work on AI agents extends a wider interest in who makes decisions, who bears their consequences, and how systems can be changed.
Ron Bronson has spent more than two decades building digital products and has led the organizations that deliver them for much of that time. His work includes service design, product and program management, technology modernization, critical design, and research into how decisions are made in public life.
At 18F and the U.S. General Services Administration, he was head of design and head of strategic communications at the same time, directed staffing and operating budgets, and advised senior agency leaders on delivery and organizational change. His federal work included projects with the U.S. Air Force, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. He previously managed a citywide website modernization in Bloomington, Indiana. For the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, he led statewide digital strategy and software delivery.
He now leads Vloora, which makes software for how people direct and evaluate AI agents. He also builds independent applications and developer tools. At the University of Michigan’s Taubman College, he teaches Urban Technology, including interaction design and public mechanics.
He has presented his work internationally at IxDA Oslo, the Service Design Network Global Conference, and other design and technology forums. His talks and writing address service design, public delivery, critical design, and the consequences of technology decisions.
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What I do
I work where technology meets everyday life: the forms, the counters, the queues and the systems behind them. Three commitments run through all of it. The people closest to the consequences should have a hand in the decisions. Design is also repair, and most of the work is fixing what’s already there. And the work should leave people more capable than it found them.
I take on design work for organizations at ronbronson.design: products, the services around them, and AI systems that people can still direct. My research, teaching and the software I build live at ronbronson.dev. Coaching is where I learned most of what I know about trust, and community is where I put it to use.
Community
I build the institutions I want to exist. It started with Aggregate in 2014 and Indianapolis Design Week in 2016. In Portland it became Portland Design Month, launched while I was president of AIGA Portland, and Design For The Public, a two-day unconference that brought more than eighty people to the city from across the country. In 2025 I started Portland Digital Corps: more than a hundred people signed up, and fifty of them rebuilt six nonprofit websites in eight-week sprints. This year I organized Years Ahead 26 at the University of Michigan.
The wider story is about who gets to shape a place and a field. I serve on the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission, advise the Global Office of Public Delivery, co-host Future Perfect Book Club and host The Sound Bulletin on KFFP. Each one is a room where people decide together what comes next. Everything I’ve founded and organized.