I am a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and now live in Oak Park, Illinois with my family.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison conferred my Bachelors degree in Political Science in 1994.
The Illinois Institute of Technology conferred a Master’s of Science degree in Technical Communication and Information Design in 2013.
I enjoy difficult challenges.
I created a weekly newsletter in high school back when computers were magic. In college, I secured computers and internet connections for all major student groups. From there, I helped restart three major student organizations in college: the student government, the student newspaper, and the yearbook. I built my first Slackware distro from source at 23.
My professional career started in television news, where I developed the web site for an CBS affiliate.
Switching to corporate life, I worked in communications as a web developer where I developed global standards for all web sites in the company. At the same company, I transitioned to a internal customer engineer where I traveled the world to teach employees how to use our global portal. My next opportunity came at a small startup to help manage their second-tier support.
I left the fast-moving consumer goods industry soon after and moved into the computer storage industry. The dominant player in the market had me create RFPs, proposals, and decks. At this time, I finished my Master’s degree. I moved on to another storage startup where I wrote online and print manuals.
The next big shift was to database software at another small startup. This opportunity led to experiencing my first IPO. This position gave me the opportunity to engage with the greater technical writing community as a speaker, award jurist, and podcast guest.
The latest transition led to leading the documentation efforts for a programming language and mobile app framework. This has been the most challenging and rewarding opportunity yet. I began my doctoral work after starting this job.
Outside of work and education, I’m a parent, spouse, friend, woodturner, drummer, singer, reader, traveller, and gamer.
Anything else about me can be found on X, LinkedIn or Facebook. Asking to be my friend or contact on any of these sites is fine, just remind me how we met!
If we haven’t met and you would like to meet, reach out and schedule a call.
Agrigento, Sicily, 22 July 2022