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
- Leading UX efforts on part of the digital experience for a major federal program with more than 21 million enrollees
- Led content strategy for the online user account experience for a major federal program with more than 65 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 400 podcast episodes
web
Web development has been a significant part of my work throughout 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 serving tens of millions of constituents.
I have led web projects from both the client side and the contractor side, with hands-on experience in product planning, user research, site audits, information architecture, wireframe and mockup design, content creation, code development, QA testing, accessibility checks, and site deployment.
I excel at understanding needs of clients and stakeholders, analyzing the necessary work, and creating alignment between clients and product, UX, engineering and data teams. This 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 digital tools that help consumers compare and enroll in ACA health insurance plans.
Medicare.gov: Led content strategy (UX content and account messaging) for the contract team overseeing the user account experience.
Duke Graduate School: Oversaw content and two redesigns.
UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy: Oversaw content and a major redesign.
Guide on Reporting Harassment: Product, design, code, and content.
Honoring Duke's First Black PhDs: Product, design, code, and content.
Case Studies
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)