Malachi Webster — Chicago, Illinois. In person or virtual.

You're the only one who knows how it works. That's the ceiling.

Small operations rarely fail at the work. They stall at the handoff — the same numbers kept in four places, the process that lives in one person's head, the intake rebuilt from memory every time somebody new shows up.

I build the trackers, the written process, and the sites that let the work run without you standing in the middle of every step. For creatives, independents, small shops, and nonprofits — sustaining already, and after more than that.

Operations systems

One place to look instead of four. Case tracking, status pipelines, and reporting you can hand to a board, a client, or a lender without rebuilding it first.

Documentation

Process written down so the work survives you being unreachable. SOPs, decision trees, escalation paths, and the FAQ that answers what people actually ask.

Websites

Built to be found, and to turn a visitor into an inquiry — with the copy written to match, and as structured as the information behind it demands.

Process cleanup

I map what gets redone by hand every week, then take out the parts that never needed a person in the first place.

Strategy & storytelling

Comms strategy, social plans, and campaign writing for organizations that need to be understood, not just seen.

Selected work

Open a row for the detail
Tax Time Chicago Site, copy, intake

A tax practice competing on trust, in a category where every competitor's site looks the same and the visitor is already nervous before they arrive. I built the site and wrote every line of it — structured so a first-time client knows what to bring, what it will cost them in time, and what happens after they hit send.

Since launch, more client traffic and a noticeably smoother intake — people arriving already oriented instead of asking the same five questions.— reported by Jason Easterly, owner, Tax Time Chicago

Visit taxtimechicago.com
For Us — Black trans & LGBTQ+ resource hub Founded and maintained

A hub I founded and run myself, not client work. A live policy tracker across federal and state legislation, plus news, safety guidance, travel risk, and a directory.

  • 95+ policy items and 140+ news entries held in structured data, not hand-edited HTML
  • Rebuilds itself several times a week, with a public changelog of what moved
  • Search and filtering by status, jurisdiction, and the visitor's own state
  • Safety-first interface: instant exit button, browsing-history warning, and a full no-JavaScript fallback for people browsing locked down

If the question is whether I can build something that stays accurate with no team behind it, this is the answer.

Visit For Us
The Answer Inc. Strategy, social, comms

A Chicago nonprofit serving autistic and developmentally disabled people and their families — real programs, no unified voice carrying them. Working as social media strategist, I built the communications spine: mission, vision, and values written to actually be usable, then a program-by-program plan for Spectrum University, Music N Me, and the anti-bullying work.

  • An organizational profile and voice, written from the mission out rather than from a template
  • A recurring newsletter structure — lead story, impact numbers, community voices, resources, one clear ask — built so staff can run it without me
  • Concept and full communications timeline for a fundraising gala: pre-event countdown, day-of coverage, post-event press recap
letmichelle.com Founded and maintained

Also mine, not client work. A bilingual English and Spanish caregiving resource, built to grow by being found rather than by ad spend — structure, content, and site, end to end.

Visit letmichelle.com
Right-to-work & leave systems at a 10,000-person company Proof it scales

The same work I do now, at a size where a missed date costs real money. I created and developed the right-to-work processes for a US and Canada workforce — the process itself, not tracking bolted on after the fact — and owned the documentation behind the leave-of-absence program alongside it.

  • Processed 80+ employees through I-9-to-E-Verify submission during the October 2025 federal shutdown backlog, with no lapse in compliance
  • Reverification tracked and triggered before employer-sponsored work authorization expired — plus the process for employees transferring into the US from abroad
  • Teams in the Philippines and LATAM trained to run US right-to-work fluidly, inbound transfers included — documentation that had to hold up for people working inside a legal system that wasn't their own
  • A 90+ page work-authorization manual: 50+ term definitions, document types and how to identify them, special-circumstances guidance for H-1B/F-1/J-1 holders, and Supplement B reverification frameworks
  • A three-part tracker covering case status, vendor outreach, and system actions — one place instead of four
  • A leave-of-absence FAQ written after personally running 60+ complex cases and several layers of vendor engagement — built from what actually came up, not from a policy document
  • An 81-employee Canadian right-to-work audit, validated at 100% accuracy — segmented into 58 immediate-action and 23 routine-monitoring cases

I document from having done the work. That's why the edge cases are in there — and why teams on the other side of the world could run it without me on the call.

Work authorization for a fifty-state clinician workforce Operations systems

A national travel-healthcare staffing company had no way to verify a clinician workforce relocating across all fifty states, plus clinicians coming in from outside the US. I built the right-to-work process from the ground up — intake templates and validation steps — working closely with credentialing and onboarding on comms, process instructions, and document-type identification. I also assisted with multi-state payroll.

That's the build that got me recruited to do it at scale.

Writing & media

Recent bylines, Chicago News Weekly

I wrote articles and cover stories for Chicago News Weekly — surveillance, economic policy, health, Black Chicago. For a rooftop shoot with Sheen Magazine, I was behind the camera for video — capturing and editing footage alongside their photographer.

If you're hiring someone to write your site, or to work out what your audience actually responds to, published work is the most direct way to judge whether I can. Read a few and decide.

See the full archive

How working together goes

We talk

Thirty minutes, free. You tell me what's breaking. I tell you straight whether I'm the fix — including when I'm not.

Book the 30 minutes →

I scope it

One page: what I build, what it costs, when it's done. Fixed price. The number doesn't move on you halfway through.

I build it

You see it come together as it happens, not at the end. Changes are part of the job, not a surcharge.

You keep it

It's yours, documented, and it works whether or not I stay involved. Maintenance if you want it, not because you're stuck.

Who this is for

Creatives, independents, small shops, nonprofits — sustaining already, and after more than that. What's usually in the way isn't talent or effort. It's that the same information lives in four places, the process lives in your head, and every new client, hire, or grant means explaining all of it again from scratch.

That's the shape of what I fix. If you're already the bottleneck in your own operation, that ceiling doesn't lift by working more hours.

Start here

Answer as much as you can

Whatever the inquiry, answer as much as you can — the more you give me, the more I can tell you in the first reply. That holds whether you know exactly what needs building or you just want a read on where you could improve. It assembles into an email you send from your own account, so nothing is collected here and nothing is tracked.

1. Which of these is closest?
2. What kind of operation is this?
3. What gets redone by hand most often? Check any.
4. How many people would use what gets built?
5. When would you want this done?
6. Roughly what have you got to spend?
7. Anything else worth knowing?
8. Who are you?

These buttons need JavaScript to assemble your answers. Email me at mjwebster.co@gmail.com and answer whichever questions above apply — that works just as well.