John Zhu

I am a communications and web development 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

content strategy

web

I have been involved in web development since the start of my career, 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 tens of millions of users.

I have led web projects from both the client side and the vendor side, with hands-on experience in every stage of the process: planning, user research, site audits, information architecture, wireframe and mockup design, content creation, code development, QA testing, accessibility checks, and site deployment.

I am particularly adept at understanding needs of clients and stakeholders and communicating them effectively to designers, engineers, content strategists, and data specialists, and vice versa. This smooth two-way communication has been a key to my success in ensuring projects finish on time, on budget, and on target.

SOME WEBSITES I HAVE WORKED ON

Healthcare.gov: Leading UX efforts for the contract team that oversees the plan selection and enrollment experience and several other tools on the federal government site through which consumers purchase ACA health insurance (more than 21 million people enrolled in ACA plans in 2024).

Medicare.gov: Led content strategy (UX content and user account 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)

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)

Honoring Duke's First Black PhDs: Planned, designed, and coded the site and developed the content over the span of a month (more about this project)

design

writing

multimedia

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. I am also well-versed in style guides, particularly The Associated Press Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style. I know common style rules by heart, but I never forget that they are guides, not straitjackets.

As an editor, I am an ally for the writer and an advocate for the reader. I relish helping writers find and strengthen their voice and style while identifying and curbing bad habits. At the same time, I am committed to making the final product clear, concise, and approachable 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)