I was born and raised in sunny Orlando, Florida and currently reside in the northeast Orlando area.
I built my first website in 1997; a flat HTML website devoted to Disney Princesses. There were twinkling stars and Belle and Beast repeatedly sashayed across the background (because of course they would), and “A Whole New World” automatically played on page load.
The site was pretty epic.
Those frontend development skills were crucial when, in 2007, I began a short stint as a freelance frontend web developer for local small businesses for a few years. Highlights of that chapter of my career include a home goods designer and retailer and an Orlando-based ‘adventuretainment’ startup that specialized in inflatable attractions, and for whom I volunteered at the 2008 IAAPA Expo.
What those years taught me is that there are MANY steps to successfully launching websites, mobile apps, campaigns, etc… that have very little to do with coding and design. If you don’t have a plan, if you aren’t organized, and if you fail to communicate, your project will fail or your product will perform poorly.
So in 2009, I moved to Washington, D.C. and shifted from development to digital project management.
I spent three years with a full-service digital agency working on projects across the digital marketing spectrum. I worked on websites, email marketing platforms and campaigns, ecommerce platforms, membership platforms, donor campaigns, and a variety of other projects.
In 2012, I left the agency to join the in-house marketing team at the George Washington University, where I still work today.
Initially, I joined the team in the early days of their newly launched Drupal platform. I defined and managed the client project process with an audience-first strategy. Simultaneously, I managed the development backlog and maintenance cycles of the Drupal platform.
Eventually, the project management process matured and I was able to shift fully to product management of the GW Drupal platform in 2016. A role I still serve today.
Because MarTech never stops innovating, I continue to learn new skills and adding to my portfolio of projects, never losing sight of what’s most important. Our millions of end users.