Shiraz Michael Nelson
Documentation that has to be right the first time.
I lead technical documentation for large regulated programs — the kind where a missing artifact doesn't mean a bad review, it means the work doesn't get approved. Currently that's state Medicaid and federal healthcare implementations at Acentra Health. The discipline travels to any environment where the record has to hold up.
What I Do
Twenty years of enterprise technical communication, documentation governance, and information design — concentrated in environments where the documentation is a compliance artifact, not an afterthought.
Federal & State Program Documentation
CMS project planning documentation across the Medicaid Enterprise Systems lifecycle: Project Management Plans, Data Management Plans, Conversion Management Plans, Training Plans, Test Plans, Communications Plans, and Issue and Risk Management Plans — plus Design, Development, and Implementation (DDI) documentation for state health departments and federal health agencies.
Certification & Compliance Evidence
Streamlined Modular Certification (SMC) evidence that carries modules from Operational Readiness Review through Certification Review: Master Test Plans, Intake Forms, Operational Report Workbooks, Plans of Action & Milestones, security and privacy control assessments, and post-review documentation — work produced to standards that must be met completely for states to secure enhanced federal funding.
Documentation Systems & Governance
Templates, authoring standards, review gates, and style governance that hold quality steady across large teams and long programs, along with the process evidence behind formal quality credentials — CMMI Maturity Level 3 for Development and an ISO 9001:2015 quality management system: controlled templates, document control procedures, retention requirements, audit evidence, and corrective action records.
Information Design & Report Production
Executive reports, SOPs, guidebooks, and visual communication assets produced to publication quality in InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Acrobat. Design treated as a functional discipline: structure, hierarchy, and legibility in service of documents people actually have to use.
Current Role
Technical Writing Specialist Lead — Acentra Health, 2020–present
Acentra Health is a national health solutions company delivering technology and clinical services to state and federal health agencies. I lead the DDI documentation effort across its state Medicaid and federal healthcare programs, directing a team of roughly ten technical writers and coordinating about forty contributors across six delivery teams.
Selected Outcomes
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Helped compress implementation timelines from roughly three years to approximately one by redesigning how documentation is authored, reviewed, and turned around. Those methods have since been adopted across programs.
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Built the documentation governance framework now used as the company-wide standard.
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Zero major defects across every submission, closing to zero defects at final delivery.
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Documentation supporting implementations across five state health departments, with proposal contributions for three more.
SMN Content — independent practice, 2010–present
Alongside my work at Acentra, I keep a small independent practice: technical writing, UX writing, content strategy, editing, and graphic design for healthcare, SaaS, technology, and digital media clients, including AI-assisted editorial pipelines for teams modernizing their documentation operations.
I take on a limited number of independent engagements when they do not conflict with my current clients. If you think there’s a fit, get in touch.
How I Work
Standards before speed
Consistency across a large team is a systems problem, not a writing problem. Templates, review gates, and unambiguous authoring standards are what make volume possible without quality drift.
AI with a human in the loop
I use large language models daily for drafting, review, and turnaround acceleration — with human review on every deliverable that leaves my hands. Credentialed through MIT Professional Education in applied AI and machine learning.
Design is part of the document
A plan nobody can navigate is a plan nobody follows. Layout, hierarchy, and visual structure are functional requirements, not decoration.
Why you won’t find a portfolio here
Most of my work cannot be shown.
The documentation I produce belongs to my clients, employers, and programs it supports. It contains things like system security plans, architecture detail, and program information that is contractually restricted and, in many cases, sensitive by state and federal standards. It does not go on a personal website — not in excerpt, not redacted, not “just the layout.”
That constraint is a feature of the work rather than a gap in the record. Documentation you can browse freely is generally documentation that carried lower stakes.
This applies to the design work as much as the writing. The reports, guidebooks, and executive materials I build are program deliverables, and they stay with the programs they belong to.
What I can offer instead: a detailed conversation about method, scope, and outcomes, and references from program leadership.
Two careers, one discipline
I spent the first half of my working life running kitchens and, eventually, a restaurant — full P&L, a team of fifty, hiring and firing, marketing, budgets, and the standardized recipe and service specifications a rotating staff executed from every single night.
Writing specifications that other people have to follow exactly, under time pressure, where getting it wrong has a real cost, is the same discipline I apply now to federal program documentation. The stakes changed. The problem didn’t.
Since then: technical writing, documentation leadership, and information design.
Credentials & Tools
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Design: Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat
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Authoring & collaboration: Confluence, SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, MadCap Flare (trained)
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Project & workflow: Jira, Trello, Monday.com, Slack, Microsoft Teams
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AI: Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini
Education
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MIT Professional Education — No-Code AI and Machine Learning: Building Data Science Solutions (2026)
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Chatham University — Master of Professional Writing, Technical & Professional Writing
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University of Massachusetts Amherst — BA, Communications
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Western Wyoming Community College — AA, Journalism & Digital Design Technologies
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California Culinary Academy, San Francisco — Culinary Arts
This site is my personal professional profile. Work described here was performed as a freelancer contractor or in my role at Acentra Health; views expressed are my own and do not represent my freelance clients, Acentra Health or its clients.
© 2026 Shiraz Nelson & SMN Content Service