I am a design professional living in Washington DC. I am a bicentennial baby from central Pennsylvania: born in Lewisburg, raised in the suburbs of Milton and then the woods across the Susquehanna River from Lock Haven. Growing up in the woods was perfect for me. I spent hours in the woods with my dog and/or friends, and my love of nature is never lessened by the fact that I now live in a big city.
I started college at Penn State’s main campus thinking I wanted to be an architect. Halfway through that, I realized I had been mistaken. Instead I earned a BA in Integrative Arts with a focus on architecture and music.
Through a friend of a friend, I found my way to my first graphic design job, for Country Casual in Gaithersburg, MD. I moved from State College, PA to Alexandria, VA. Another designer and I overhauled the look of the company’s annual catalog and watched their sales spike as soon as it hit customers’ mailboxes.
A year later, I made the move from that small, independently owned business to working for ADP in their now-defunct Medical Claims Services (MCS) division in Rockville, MD. I moved to Arlington. I designed three websites for ADP MCS and two other ADP divisions, and helped brand their various medical claims software products. After I had been there for almost three years, ADP began dissolving MCS and I was out the door in a round of layoffs. I moved into the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington DC.
Right around this time, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas, killing all seven crew members. A few months later I got a call from Valador, a government contractor based in Virginia. They had been awarded a contract to provide staffing for The Columbia Accident Investigation Board. Valador had found my resume on Monster.com and asked me to come in for an interview. I went in to meet them, realized that I would be designing the CAIB’s report at the conclusion of their investigation, and started working immediately after the interview ended.
In my portfolio, the CAIB Report is one of the projects of which I am most proud; I remember when the space shuttles were new (I still have the iron-on prize from a box of Cheerios: The spaceship that blasts off like a rocket and lands like an airplane) and the kid in me had never really let go of the desire to be an astronaut. I consider myself very lucky for having had the opportunity to contribute to the Board’s mission to ensure that such a tragedy never happened again. After the Report was released I continued for a few more months to work for Valador, designing more reports for NASA. The report went on to earn the Award for Distinguished Technical Communication from the Washington DC chapter of the Society for Technical Communication.
It was 2004, an election loomed, and MSHC Partners (closed as of 2010) needed designers for the election cycle. One piece of direct mail that I designed went on to win the Silver Pollie Award — Absentee Ballot Mail from the American Association of Political Consultants.
Six months later the election was over and I took accepted the position of Design Coordinator a the still-young company The Glover Park Group. After two years I was promoted to Art Director. I moved to Dupont Circle, then Captiol Hill. Six years later I continue to be a part of the GPG team.
I love my family, my friends, the outdoors, books, music, photography, traveling, science, sci-fi, good food, Seattle, New Orleans and all of my adopted home state of Louisiana, Canada, Penang Chicken, and finding creative ways to help humanity continue to stumble onward for as long as possible.