Summary
Seasoned leader focused on delivering user-centric, sustainable digtally-focused content and digital solutions and effective, on-brand strategy. Change agent with deep experience leading digital transformation as well as authoring content strategy, data governance and systems design. Passion for building inclusive teams, strengthening constituent relationships and building partnerships with stakeholders.
Leadership experience and areas of expertise include:
Content Strategy | Digital Solutions | Change Management | Strategic Planning | Team Leadership | Collaboration | Program Management | Writing, Editing and SEO | Agile PM | Data Mining | Governance and Process | Business Operations | Data-driven Decision-making | Email Systems | Taxonomy and Ontology Building | Analytics | Search Platforms | Systems Integration | A/B Testing
Professional Experience
American Society for Microbiology (ASM), Washington, D.C. * April 2015-Present
SENIOR MANAGER, DIGITAL STRATEGY (promoted from DIGITAL MEDIA MANAGER)
- Serve on leadership team that sets the business and technology vision and strategic direction for digital footprint, collaboratively improving operational effectiveness through content and tool implementation with focus on implementing video, podcasts, blogs, media and PR to social media campaigns, digital analytics and bulk email.
- Selected as acting co-director for department for 18 months; promoted to senior manager after incumbent hired.
- Oversight of 2 separate staffing, production and operations budgets, managing vendors and partnering with leaders to ensure enterprise-level decision-making, business continuity and goal completion.
- Oversee development, launch and operations for new website, securing enterprise-wide investments that resulted in a $1 million budget and pre-launch, content-first strategy that resulted in a 200% traffic growth over 3 years and won the ASAE 2019 Gold Circle Award for best website.
- Set content strategy standards for staff and volunteers, proactively researching industry best practices to identify and create taxonomy/controlled vocabulary for use across digital enterprise systems; policy development resulted in new style guide and governance handbook.
- Research, buy, develop and implement cloud and local vendor tools, such as content management systems (CMS), managing proposal review process to ensure value propositions and effective systems integration, and leading collaboration on development and implementation of tools.
- Collaborate with enterprise stakeholders (e.g., Legal, Public Affairs) to ensure digital properties encompass enterprise core values, KPIs, and organizational goals and strategy.
- Lead change management to produce effective staff experience and adoption around content strategy and storytelling for the web, teaching staff about web and SEO writing and improving staff productivity through adoption of new tools, such as editorial calendar and content execution workgroup.
- Provide technical expertise and guide staff on systems deployment and usability approaches to deliver high-quality user experience (UX) through new standards, personas, user flows/testing, surveys and stakeholder interviews.
- Evaluate and redesign disjointed, decentralized digital publishing practices into a streamlined, automated content strategy, resulting in new architecture and visual redesign standards to ensure effective, consistent use.
- Implement and monitor Google Analytics, Google AdWords and Google Display Network to produce reliable metrics, using data-driven results to report progress to leadership.
- Supervise 4-person team and 12 scientific writers to provide enterprise-wide support services, leading research on emerging technologies to create a culture of innovation and drive focus on process improvement and accountability.
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Arlington, VA • April 2009-March 2015
DIRECTOR OF PUBLISHING
- Led website redesign that led to 10% more unique visitors each year over the last 5 years of employment, 7% more call-to-actions (CTAs), 40% greater revenue for year-end online fundraising and 30% more returning visitors.
- Developed and implemented new print and digital content strategic plan and demonstrated commitment to the user through adoption of a user-centric approach, resulting in a 44% increase in revenue.
- Established effective audiences and bolstered channels by building personas and user paths.
- Built partnership network with celebrities, brands and news agencies to increase public recognition of products.
- Managed vendors and print buying, including request for proposals (RFP), project management and budgeting.
- Launched Google Analytics and metrics strategies, tracking customer actions through the use of Google Tag Manager events, customer funnels in AdWords and Crazy Egg analytics.
- Directed production of 12 print publications per year, distributed to 50K customers.
- Drove standards for branding to ensure consistency in look and feel.
- Managed vendor relationships and programming for annual meeting.
- Oversaw marketing, creative and social media campaigns, resulting in community growth on Facebook (30K to 180K in 3 years), Twitter (2K to 50K in 3 years) and Instagram (200 to 2K in 6 months).
- Directed team of 5 reports, creating service-oriented culture of continuous improvement to advance business needs.
American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI), Alexandria, VA • June 2004-April 2009
COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER
- Built online bookstore and forged partnerships to enhance digital publications, increasing book sales 200%.
- Managed publication and design for professional law journal, corporate and sales website and elements of books.
- Deployed digital version of ABI Journal as well as Amazon and Google Books efforts.
- Oversaw direct mail marketing efforts around ABI publications.
- Ran bookstore at annual meeting.
- Managed team of 5 interns, guiding them through relationship management and support services for ABI.
Innerloop Magazine, Washington, D.C. • August 2001-August 2004
PUBLISHER + FOUNDER
- Founded monthly DJ magazine with a circulation of 8,000.
- Led staff of 20 and operating budget of 20K.
- Received “up-and-coming design” by Creative Review Magazine (U.K.) in 2003, featured in Editorial Design textbook and stocked in MICA (Baltimore) and Art Institute (Arlington) libraries.
EDUCATION
- Master of Arts, Publishing, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
- Digital publishing/strategy concentration
- Bachelor of Arts, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
- Nonfiction writing/editing concentration
- Staff writer and style editor at university newspaper, intern at MTV and The Potomac News
SOFTWARE + SYSTEMS
- Metrics: Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, Optimizely
- Project management: SharePoint, Trello, SmartSheet, BaseCamp
- Association and Content Management Systems: Netforum, Salesforce, Kentico, Drupal, Joomla, WordPress
- Mail clients: Lyris, Informz, BlueHornet, MailChimp, Real Magnet
- Design: Adobe CS, Axure. Deep graphic design experience and strong art direction skills
- Working knowledge of HTML/HTML5, CSS and XML
CERTIFICATIONS + MEMBERSHIPS
- Member of: CESSE, Association Media & Publishing, UXPA D.C., DC Web Women, AIGA
- GA-certified partner trained in Google Analytics (2013 and 2017)
- Adobe-certified trained in Creative Suite (2008)
AWARDS + SPEAKING / TEACHING
- ASAE 2019 Gold Circle Award, Best Website, for asm.org redesign
- Kentico 2019 “Site of the Year” finalist for asm.org redesign
- “Content Models and Kentico,” Kentico Connection 2019, Denver, CO
- “Build a Controlled Vocabulary to Bust Silos,” December 2017, ASAE Tech Expo, Washington, D.C.
- “Building a Controlled Vocabulary for Your Organization,” July 2018, CESSE, Pasadena, CA
- Graphic Design USA In-house Design Award, 2006, 2007 and 2008, for logo and cover designs, art director
- PR Newswire “PR on a shoestring” award, 2013, for digital campaign “You Are Not Alone,” creative director