ABOUT ME

Ok, here comes the deep background, for those who are interested:

I was born in Chicago, which is still one of my favorite cities — take the Architecture Society’s boat tour next time you’re there. But I mostly grew up in the suburbs just north of Dallas and I come from an old Texas family. Here’s a fun bit of totally random trivia for you: of the four members of my nuclear family — mom, dad, brother and me — all four of us went to high school with kids who later went on to become pretty famous actors: My mom with Morgan Fairchild (Dallas, Murphy Brown) at Lake Highlands, my dad with Stephen Tobolowsky (Groundhog Day, Silicon Valley) at Kimball, and my brother and me with Jensen Ackles (Supernatural, The Boys) at Berkner. No, I cannot get you an autograph ;) I was active in speech and debate, choir and drama. My earliest experience with fledgling social media was during high school in the mid-90s, regularly participating in an online discussion forum about the works of late 20th century musical theatre composer, Stephen Sondheim. Yes, I was one of those kids.

My academic background spans the performing arts, communication studies, rhetoric, politics and history. After high school, I studied musical theatre including several levels of acting courses, script analysis, ballet, jazz, and modern dance, vocal performance, choral music, and music theory. My freshman year of BFA, I had roles in The Threepenny Opera (Brecht & Weil), The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Christopher Durang), and HAiR: The American Tribal Love Rock Musical (Ragni, Rado & MacDermot). After transferring to a conservatory program to finish my degree, I earned an Associate of Applied Arts in Acting Performance. A little while later, I co-founded a mercurial little art collective in Deep Ellum, Dallas, hosting some pretty wild events and experimenting with original performance art theatre and music.

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That led to a whirlwind three-and-a-half year gig as a singer in the choir of an internationally recognized Texas export, a band of symphonic pop rock misfits known as The Polyphonic Spree. In addition to singing, sweating, emoting and arranging, my duties included serving as tech lead and venue liaison for the choir, assistant director of an original multimedia theatrical event, A Polyphonic Christmas Carol, and representing the band in interviews for MTV, BBC Radio One, The Dallas Observer and The Stanford Gazette. Among our international touring, performance, recording, and press for live, studio, music video, radio, photo, television, and film venues and media, it was an honor to perform on the main stages of both the Glastonbury Music and Arts Festival and the Coachella Valley Festival. I’ll never forget sharing the stage with legendary artists such as David Bowie, Patti Labelle, Cyndi Lauper, Oprah Winfrey and Queen. Televised appearances included The Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s Concert for Peace, the MTV Video Music Awards, the inaugural UK Music Hall of Fame Awards, Austin City Limits, V Graham Norton, Later with Jools Holland, Top of the Pops, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and Scrubs. During my tenure, we earned a Silver Record for sales of our debut album, The Beginning Stages Of... (BPI, U.K.); three Top-40 Singles (U.K.); and the #1 spot on the Billboard U.S. Heat Seekers Chart for our second studio album, Together We’re Heavy. It was also during this period that I created my first proper social media accounts, first on Friendster, then MySpace. Being part of The Polyphonic Spree was a tremendous privilege, traveling all over the U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan, and I’m incredibly grateful for the experience. Ask me about my favorite moments sometime and I’ll tell you some stories.

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I left the band at the end of 2004 to go back to school. Moving from Dallas to Austin and completing two part-time semesters at Austin Community College, I then transferred to the University of Texas at Austin full-time as a history major with a minor in government. After being accepted to the College of Communications, I switched my major to the bachelor of science program in Communication Studies with an emphasis in Political Communication and Rhetorical Theory. I absolutely loved it — these were some of the best, most enriching years of my life. In addition to doing a ton of writing, this is also where I started formally studying social media. It's also when I first created my Facebook account, back when a college email address was required. Some of the highlights of my university experience include being inducted into Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society, having my essay on James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room selected for my professor’s doctoral teaching portfolio, having one of my original speeches selected as an instructional example for future semesters of my Speechwriting and Criticism survey, and being selected for a competitive travel grant to attend the National Communication Association’s annual academic conference in Chicago as a member of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship Cross-Disciplinary Consortium’s Pre-graduate Internship. However, as a returning (read: older) student struggling with the isolation of academic life and frankly, the financial burden of college, I left UT just one requirement short of graduating. Maybe one day I’ll finally finish my degree, but I learned what I set out to learn and fortunately, not having that piece of paper hasn’t stood in my way yet. 

Throughout my time as both a performer and a student, I did as many of both do to get by and learned the ropes of the service industry. I’m proud of my 18 year career in hospitality — there is a tremendous joy in caring for people through service and facilitating incredible experiences for guests to cherish. After college, I built on my time in casual dining, fine dining, catering and high-end hotels, working as a waiter, trainer, catering and events lead, media dinner server, and eventually as restaurant manager and maître d'. It was in these roles that I began applying my social media and PR training in professional environments as well, creating and posting content, integrating digital properties, identifying and positioning the brand, engaging with audiences and coordinating media and press opportunities. This allowed me to hone my skills and get hands-on experience that served me well as I transitioned into the corporate world.

After leaving the hospitality industry, my first full-time corporate marketing job was as Social Media Manager at NFP, a New York -based insurance brokerage and consultant with a large corporate office in Austin, TX. I was initially hired as the Executive Administrative Assistant to the SVP of Brand and Marketing, who quickly took an interest in my communications and social media experience, and began providing me with growth opportunities to support social media efforts within the marketing team. I was moved out of the admin role and promoted to full-time Social Media Coordinator and then Social Media Manager, the first time the company had dedicated a marketing resource specifically for social media. I worked at NFP for four years, and some of my proudest accomplishments in that role are listed above and detailed in my resume and portfolio in linked project decks. ​​

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Choosing to leave NFP after four years was bittersweet, but I learned a lot and was excited to seek out new challenges. I wanted to try my hand at freelancing and find out if I could be my own boss, while solving problems and providing value to clients. I took my time figuring out how to best position myself, my capabilities and expertise, being thoughtful about my own passions and how I wanted my life to look. I overhauled my resume, built a portfolio and created the earliest version of this site. Supplementing my savings with ride share driving, I eventually connected with a recruiter whose client — an insurance fraud investigations company — was in the middle of a rebrand. They needed a combo copywriter/copy editor with B2B experience in branding and digital platforms to edit draft copy and write new copy for their new website. I enjoyed working with the team, who contracted me directly several more times for copy work on various white papers and brochures. I also consulted on a few projects for friends, contributed to some podcasts and a marketing proposal for a healthcare startup that didn't end up going anywhere ... that's the way it goes sometimes.

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The pandemic soon changed the landscape of, well ... pretty much everything, including the ongoing launch of my freelance business. I felt fortunate for my health, for my ability to stay home, and that I still had contracts to work on, but the future was increasingly hazy. In hindsight, it might have been the perfect time to dig in and stick with it. But when I was contacted by another recruiter straight off of LinkedIn for a full-time, remote opportunity with "a prominent social media company", I had to consider the potential risk to my budding freelance business against the value of job security with a major employer in uncertain times.​

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The recruiter's company was hiring for a client who they couldn't say but clearly was ...  the social network, the one with the big blue logo, the largest social networking site in the world. They were primarily sourcing for customer support agents but recommended me instead for the agent lead role of Subject Matter Expert. I served in that role for the first few months before being promoted to Team Lead, directly supervising the team of 25 agents and taking on additional responsibilities in client relationship management. As one of the largest advertising platforms in the world, they were also targeting aggressive growth as a commerce platform. The customer support program launched onboarding process guidance with white glove service to high-value commerce clients who were transitioning from offsite, third-party point-of-purchase applications onto the new onsite Shopping with Checkout feature, via concierge email and video call support.

After another year and several expansions to the program, I was promoted again to Operations Manager and moved out to the Bay Area for a six month contract. I managed an onsite, in-office team this time, launching another customer experience program for the same client. This launch was a first-of-its-kind program for them, piloting and expanding direct user support workflows for account restoration via chat with a live agent. I directly supervised our Team Leads, Senior Trainers and Quality Evaluators on this program, indirectly supervising approximately seventy agents and Subject Matter Experts. Along with our sibling site in Dublin, Ireland, we managed the client relationship and delivered on SLAs and innovations in quality assurance, training, common responses and support workflows. Securing an extension of an additional six months on the contract, we further expanded the program with the launch of a third site in Manila, Philippines. Despite the challenges of managing an onsite team during COVID RTO, I loved the coaching opportunities this role provided and getting to learn how such a monumental company worked from the inside.

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The Bay Area was fantastic — the geography is exquisite, the weather was a massive relief coming from central Texas, and San Francisco is a phenomenal city no matter the hype. But I wasn't happy. Don't get me wrong, I was grateful for such a good job in the chaos of the COVID era, especially one where I had so many opportunities to grow. But I missed what I was doing before the pandemic. So after a year in the Bay, I came home to regroup and reignite my passion for providing consultative strategic solutions in content and copy, social media and digital engagement. And that's exactly what I'm doing now.

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