DreamSF Fellowship
A website designed to grow with every new generation of fellows.
TL;DR
- Full website migration from Wix to Webflow for a city-run fellowship program
- CMS-driven structure supporting fellows, cohorts, bios, and partner organizations
- Visual refresh focused on storytelling, photography, and program clarity
- Ongoing annual updates to support new cohorts and evolving content
Overview
The DreamSF Fellowship is a paid leadership and professional development program for immigrant youth in San Francisco. Operated by the City and County of San Francisco’s Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs (OCEIA), the program partners with nonprofit organizations to place fellows in hands-on roles that support immigrant communities across the Bay Area.
The fellowship runs on a yearly cycle, welcoming a new cohort each summer and supporting fellows over a 12-month period. Because of this, the website isn’t a static marketing tool — it’s an active, evolving resource that needs to stay current, clear, and engaging year after year.
The Challenge
Before our work together, the DreamSF Fellowship website lived on Wix and had become difficult to maintain and update consistently. The design felt outdated, content was fragmented, and the site didn’t fully reflect the energy, professionalism, or scale of the program.
Key challenges included:
- Organizing over a decade of fellowship history and cohorts
- Highlighting fellows as the heart of the program
- Clearly communicating the application process and timeline
- Supporting frequent updates tied to each new cohort
- Ensuring the site felt modern, credible, and easy to manage internally
Goals & Priorities
The primary goals for the redesign were to:
- Create a clean, modern website that reflects the fellowship’s impact
- Build a structure that could scale annually as new cohorts are added
- Center fellows, their stories, and their host organizations
- Make application information easy to find and understand
- Give the communications team a site that’s easy to update and maintain
Approach
We migrated the website from Wix to Webflow, which offered the flexibility needed to support complex content structures without relying on plugins or workarounds.
Webflow allowed us to:
- Build CMS collections for fellows and cohorts
- Maintain consistent design across pages while allowing content to grow
- Add motion and interaction in a controlled, intentional way
- Ensure long-term stability without plugin conflicts or technical debt
Visually, the design builds on the program’s existing identity, using San Francisco landmarks, professional photography, and strong typography to ground the site in place and purpose. The focus remains on the fellows — their experiences, their growth, and their connection to the city and its nonprofit ecosystem.
Solution
The final website is organized around three core experiences:
- Home: Program overview, testimonials, and a marquee-style display of nonprofit host organizations
- Meet the Fellows: A CMS-driven archive of current and past cohorts, with individual bio pages for each fellow dating back to 2014
- How to Apply: Clear application details, eligibility requirements, timelines, and expandable FAQs
Subtle animations and page-load interactions add energy without distracting from content. Professional photography plays a central role, helping each cohort feel present and visible, while maintaining a consistent look across the site.
Results & Impact
The redesigned website now serves as a long-term digital home for the DreamSF Fellowship. It supports:
- Over 10 years of fellowship history
- More than 220 fellows across 12+ cohorts
- Partnerships with 60+ nonprofit organizations
The site is easier to navigate, easier to update, and better aligned with the fellowship’s mission. Each year, new content can be added without restructuring the site, making the website a sustainable tool rather than a recurring problem.
"We have worked with Tona Ramos for several years to keep our program's website updates, fresh and relevant to our site visitors. Not only does Tona provide clear communication and timely project delivery, but he also thoughtfully provides suggestions that further improve the website's function and design. We truly could not ask for a better, more professional web designer!"
Supporting a program that
evolves year after year?
I help teams build websites that grow with their work without starting over each time.