I am a communications professional based in Durham, North Carolina. My career has spanned many fields and job titles: civic tech, journalism, education, B2B, nonprofit, writer, editor, designer, content strategist, director of communications, podcaster .... Three constants, however, have served as my compass throughout that journey: a passion for storytelling, a thirst to keep learning and growing, and a desire to use my broad repertoire of knowledge, skills, and experience to help organizations achieve missions that contribute to our society.
Select Career Highlights
- Developing personalized content and user experience on website for major federal program with more than 60 million beneficiaries
- Oversaw communications and content strategy for a graduate school with 80+ programs, 3,500+ students, 35,000+ alumni, and complex, decentralized operations
- Advised senior executive leaders on a range of communications and operational issues
- Built an organization's communications operation from scratch
- Created and managed two organizations' social media presence
- Spearheaded multiple large-scale website redesigns
- Oversaw content and user experience on websites for two large, complex organizations
- Led the development of an organization's 10-year strategic plan, including writing and editing the document
- Wrote and edited three successful $1 million grant proposals
- Led design for an award-winning newspaper sports department
- Taught graduate-level courses in both written and visual communication for a flagship university
- Produced more than 300 podcast episodes
web
Web development has been part of my career from the beginning, whether it's building five-page sites for small businesses, overseeing sites with tens of thousands of nodes for large organizations, or enhancing content and user experience for government websites with millions of users. I have led web development projects both from the client side and the vendor side, with hands-on experience in every stage of the process: planning the project, conducting user research and site audits, mapping out the information architecture, designing wireframes and mockups, writing code, testing pages, finetuning the user experience, creating and refining the content, and deploying the finished product.
This combination of skills and experience makes me well-suited to oversee web development projects. I am particularly adept at assessing an organization's needs for its digital presence and communicating those needs effectively to information architects, designers, developers, and data specialists. Inversely, I also excel at conveying those team members' questions and recommendations to the key stakeholders in the client organization. Ensuring such smooth two-way communication helps ensure the project finishes on time, on budget, and to the satisfaction of all parties.
SOME WEBSITES I HAVE WORKED ON
Medicare.gov: Leading content strategy (UX content and user outreach messaging) for the contract team that oversees the site's authenticated user experience, which has more than 12 million account holders.
Duke Graduate School: Oversaw two redesigns and managed day-to-day content (2022 redesign | 2014 redesign | prospective students guide)
UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy: Maintained site content for 7 years and oversaw a major redesign (site has been redesigned since then; learn more about my work on the site)
Honoring Duke's First Black PhDs: Designed and coded the site and developed the content over the span of a month (more about this project)
Interactive Guide on Reporting Harassment: Designed and coded the site and adapted the content from a PowerPoint-based version of the guide (more about this project)
Duke Graduate School Online Recognition of Graduates: Designed and coded the original site and developed the content, all in about 1 week (I have updated the site's content on an annual basis since 2020)
editing
I have spent 20-plus years editing a wide variety of written work, from journalistic reporting to academic papers, from 400-page documents to single-word call-to-action buttons. As an editor, I am just as comfortable at rebuilding the structure of a piece as I am at digging into the line-by-line minutiae.
Thanks to my experience as a journalist, I have a keen eye for details, an appreciation for accuracy, and an ability to improve copy quickly on deadline. I am particularly skilled at taking disparate chunks of information, data, and other content and editing them into a cohesive whole that is consistent in voice, tone, and style throughout. I am also well-versed in various style guides, particularly The Associated Press Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style. I know frequently used style rules by heart, but I’m always cognizant of the fact that they are guides, not straitjackets.
I approach my editing work as both an ally for the writer and an advocate for the reader. I relish working with writers to find and strengthen their voice, helping them accentuate the essence of their individual style while identifying and curbing bad habits. At the same time, I am committed to making the final product as clear, concise, and approachable as possible for the intended audience.
EXAMPLES OF RECENT EDITING PROJECTS
Report by APSA Task Force on Systemic Inequality in the Discipline: I took four chapters and an executive summary—all written by different teams with different formats, styles, and tones—and turned them into a cohesive 400-page report. As part of the process, I also handled pagination of the report and significantly rewrote and reformatted one chapter to more clearly and succinctly present the data being discussed.
“Crises, Race, Acknowledgement: The Centrality of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics to the Future of Political Science:” I edited the address by the president of the American Political Science Association for the organization’s annual meeting. The address was both delivered at the conference and published in print.
teaching
From 2017 to 2020, I served as an instructor for the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I taught in the school's online certificate program, a graduate-level program geared toward working professionals looking to expand their knowledge and skills. The program consisted of three courses, and I taught two of them. My duties included teaching, leading online discussions, grading, writing syllabi, and redesigning the visual communication course.
COURSES TAUGHT
Digital Writing and Editing (Sample syllabus)
Visual Communication and Multimedia (Sample syllabus)