A Brief History of My Design Experience

I have 9+ years of experience in design and content strategy. Along the way, I've worked with businesses to build brands, designed courtroom communication strategies to protect brands, and taught students to deconstruct and re-envision brands.

Designer and Content Strategist

Self-Employed

I perform contract work as a brand strategist, content strategist, web designer, UI designer, and design researcher. Depending on client need, I most often work alongside small business owners in a design consulting, strategy, and production role.

Clients include: Gamma Code, DB Services, Collision Solutions, Enduring Investments, StonyCreek Golf Club, Circle City Athletics and others.

Visiting Assistant Professor

Indiana University – Herron School of Art & Design

I teach the core integrator studio courses for Junior- and Senior-level Visual Communication Design majors.

Students learn design research methods to uncover problems and design solutions in unstructured situations and undefined problem sets. Other key duties include designing an online Visual Communication class for non-majors, advising graduate students in thesis work, teaching independent study, and committee work for NASAD accreditation.

Research Assistant & Instructional Designer

Carnegie Mellon University

I worked with Professors Suguru Ishizaki and Stacie Rohrbach to develop an eLearning program to teach communication design to non-designers.

My role was establishing measurable learning goals, designing movie tutorials, and performing user testing to ensure students were learning the intended material. Tasks included researching and applying multimedia learning techniques, editing scripts, and developing a user testing protocol.

Manager – Traffic & Production

Young|Wells Marketing • Communications

I streamlined the project management process by researching and implementing new software to allow easier budget oversight, project scheduling, and greater agency-to-client transparency. Day-to-day tasks included overseeing budgets totaling $5 million annually, project scheduling, gathering estimates, and proofreading.

Communication Strategist

CDS Strategy Consulting

I worked in concert with attorneys and the CEO/Creative Director to distill complex information into clear and compelling stories for judges and juries.

My primary duty was synthesizing and simplifying legal, scientific, and technical arguments into logical stories using plain English. Developing trial strategies occurred in week-long brainstorming sessions that covered risk assessment, rebuttals, and case-in-chief development. Case exposure ranged from a few million dollars to multi-billion dollar lawsuits.

Master of Design, Communication Planning & Information Design

Carnegie Mellon School of Design

My program of study was a human-centered design degree combining writing and communication design with additional coursework in multimedia learning, interaction design, service design, and design research.

Bachelor of Arts, General Studies – Arts & Humanities

Indiana University – Bloomington

My program of study comprised of coursework from many different disciplines, including writing, history, sociology, and fine art.