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Stacey Cogswell

Salesforce Business Analyst at Innovate! Inc. The person who made sure requirements were right before a single line of code was written. EPA program specialist. The bridge between the program office and the dev team.

Innovate! Inc.EPA Programs

The Arc

Every development team has a spectrum: on one end, the people who write the code; on the other, the people who make sure the code does the right thing. Stacey Cogswell is on the second end — and the entire team is better for it. She's a Salesforce Business Analyst who specialized in EPA program implementations at Innovate! Inc.

At Innovate, Stacey was the person who sat between the EPA program office and the development team. She gathered the requirements that nobody else could extract. She documented the business processes that nobody else fully understood. She wrote the stories that developers could actually build against, and she validated the results against the original need. That's the BA role done right.

She's one of the names you hear every time someone talks about the Innovate team — right alongside Josh Long, Catherine Nolan, Matt Brumberger, and Tom Perkowitz. That team delivered complex government Salesforce solutions for years. Stacey was a big part of why it worked.

Career Timeline

~2014

Salesforce Business Analyst

Innovate! Inc.

Joined Innovate! and started working on EPA Salesforce projects as a business analyst. From the start, Stacey was the person who made sure the team understood the requirements before building anything — the kind of BA who prevents rework by getting it right the first time.

2014 - 2017

EPA Program Analysis — OPPT & CAS Programs

Innovate! Inc. / EPA

Worked as the business analyst on EPA Salesforce implementations including OPPT Program Plan and CAS (Cloud Advisory Services) programs. Gathered requirements from federal program offices, documented business processes, and translated complex regulatory needs into Salesforce solution designs. Worked closely with Catherine Nolan on sprint planning and with developers like Glen and Josh Long on implementation.

2017 - 2019

Senior Business Analyst — Multi-Program Delivery

Innovate! Inc. / EPA

Expanded her scope across multiple EPA program offices. Handled requirements for HSRAP, BMC, and EAD systems. Stacey was one of the people who could sit in a room with EPA stakeholders and translate their needs into stories that developers could actually build against. That skill — translation between domains — is what separates good BAs from great ones.

2019 - 2021

Business Analyst — Platform Evolution

Innovate! Inc.

Continued supporting EPA platform evolution and new feature development. As systems matured, Stacey helped manage the growing complexity — ensuring new requirements didn’t conflict with existing functionality and that the platform continued to serve its users well.

Innovate! Inc. Era

Core Team Member

The Innovate Team

Part of the core Innovate! team alongside Josh Long, Catherine Nolan, Jordon Schulman, Larry Spackman, Mark Filpus, Matt Brumberger, Tom Perkowitz, and Glen Bradford. One of the people who made the team function — not through flashy heroics, but through consistent, thorough, reliable work that kept projects on track.

What Stacey Brings

Business Analysis & Requirements Gathering

The art of understanding what a client needs — not just what they say they want, but what they actually need. Stacey mastered this on EPA projects where the distance between a vague regulatory requirement and a buildable Salesforce story could be enormous.

EPA & Government Compliance

Deep experience with EPA program offices including OPPT, BMC, HSRAP, and EAD. Understands the regulatory context, the approval workflows, and the compliance requirements that shape every feature decision in government Salesforce implementations.

Stakeholder Communication

The bridge between technical teams and program offices. Stacey could explain technical constraints to non-technical stakeholders and translate regulatory mandates into development tasks — both directions, fluently.

Salesforce Solution Design

Not just documenting requirements but designing the solution. Understanding Salesforce’s capabilities well enough to propose approaches, identify constraints, and guide the architecture before development begins.

Agile Process & Sprint Delivery

Worked within agile delivery frameworks on multi-year Salesforce implementations. Sprint planning, story writing, acceptance criteria, UAT coordination — the full BA role within an agile team.

How I Know Stacey

Innovate! Inc. — EPA Salesforce projects, same team

Stacey and I were on the same team at Innovate! Inc. working on EPA Salesforce implementations. She was the BA. I was writing APEX. That relationship — developer and BA — is one of the most important in any software project, and Stacey made it work. When I had questions about requirements, she had answers. When the program office changed direction, Stacey was the one who caught it and updated the stories before we built the wrong thing.

We were part of the same core team for years — alongside Josh Long, Catherine Nolan, Jordon Schulman, Larry Spackman, Mark Filpus, Matt Brumberger, Tom Perkowitz, and the rest of the Innovate crew. That team delivered EPA program after EPA program, and Stacey was one of the people who kept the delivery machine running.

The best BAs are the ones you don't have to worry about. When Stacey gathered the requirements, you knew they were right. When she wrote a story, you knew it was buildable. When she said the client approved it, you knew you could build it with confidence. That's trust, and it's earned over years of consistent, excellent work.

Why She Matters

Software projects fail more often because of bad requirements than bad code. The BA who gets the requirements right saves the team weeks of rework and the client thousands of dollars. Stacey was that BA — consistently, across multiple EPA programs, for years.

Innovate was a great place to work because of people like Stacey — people who cared about getting it right, who showed up prepared, and who made everyone else's job easier by doing their own job exceptionally well.

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