Systems · Spaces · Things
Where are things? · Where should they be? · What is the gap telling us?
Melanie E. Magdalena · Austin, TX
The throughline
At twenty, I published a spatial analysis of Maya settlements in Belize — mapping where people built, what moved between them, and what the gaps revealed about how a society organized itself around scarce resources.
I've been asking the same questions in every role since. Where are things? Where should they be? What is the gap telling us?
As a digital systems architect for nonprofits and universities, I built data structures by asking what an organization actually needed to know about itself — not what it was already tracking. As a security officer, I redesigned patrol routes around what the floor plan didn't show. Now, I've trained in a regional food bank's warehouse distributing 63 million meals annually, learning how physical goods move from dock to table — and where the process breaks down.
The tools change. The questions don't.
2012
Maya spatial analysis published, age 20
2014–22
Digital systems architecture nonprofit & web
2023–24
Security & route design
2024 →
Inventory, logistics & supply chain ongoing
How I work
01
Build. Audit. Ask why.
I build them, document them, and ask why they were built this way in the first place. Not just: does it work — but what assumptions is this built on, and are those assumptions still true? Whether it's a data architecture for a nonprofit or a receiving workflow at a warehouse, the audit question is the same.
02
Physical. Digital. Both.
A warehouse floor is a spatial optimization problem. So is a nonprofit's information architecture. I move between them because the logic is the same at both scales: who needs to get to what, how fast, and what's in the way. The space changes. The method doesn't.
03
Count. Move. Recover.
Goods, data, people, ideas — things need to be tracked, moved, and found again when something goes wrong. Precision matters because it's how we know what's real versus what the system thinks is real. The distance between those two is where most operational problems actually live.
Selected work
All work →Systems Implementation · UX · Nonprofit
Full digital platform redesign for a DC-based policy leadership organization. 40+ page information architecture, 13-template design system, structured content management for non-technical staff, interactive global partner map. Staff can now update the site without a developer.
hungercenter.org ↗
Systems Architecture · Data · Education
Three-role student placement platform for MIT's Office of the Provost. Federated Airtable data backbone, custom bidirectional sync plugin, MIT Kerberos SSO. Built to track student innovation pathways across a fragmented ecosystem of labs, programs, and ventures. Operational infrastructure the institution had never had.
Case study coming soon
Spatial Analysis · Archaeology · 2012
Published at twenty. Spatial analysis of Maya settlement patterns — mapping where people built, what resources moved between nodes, and what the gaps revealed about societal organization. The origin of the question that runs through everything else here.
Read the paper →
Inventory · Data · Operations Analytics
Eight analytical projects applying institutional theory to physical operations: ABC inventory segmentation, safety stock modeling, vendor scorecards, demand forecasting, and public asset audit simulation. Each one asks: what does the system assume it can know?
In progress — publishing through Spring 2026
Central Texas Food Bank Warehouse Operations Program — Graduate
Full warehouse lifecycle: receiving, inventory, manufacturing, forklift operation, last-mile delivery logistics, and food safety certification. 63 million meals annually. 21 Central Texas counties.
Writing
Systems portfolio — a series applying institutional theory to supply chain and inventory problems. Hayek, Ostrom, and what optimization misses.
In progress
Reading
Soul of the Samurai: Modern Translations of Three Classic Works of Zen & Bushido
Thomas Cleary
Volunteering
Planting baby trees, spring pruning, spreading mulch, and (always) picking up (more) trash. Next up: Keep Austin Beautiful Day — lake shoreline cleanup.
Austin Parks Foundation · Keep Austin Beautiful · Waterloo Greenway