Work & Education History
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About
Question, study, interview. Write, revise, edit. Again.
I’ve worked in a number of different fields, but communications and relationship-building are the underlying constants in my career experience. I’m adept at coordinating teams and projects with remote members, including those that serve multiple markets and locations. I've spent more than two decades distilling complex, technical ideas into clear language for a range of audiences and purposes.
I first leveraged that skill as a reporter for the Argus Leader, South Dakota's largest newspaper. My coverage of government and cultural affairs helped personalize the issues to readers' daily lives and made the abstract real to them. Those capabilities later served me while I worked as an editor for Entrepreneur, a business publication. I untangled industry jargon to craft engaging, shareable op-eds and columns for digital audiences.
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
I've expanded on my journalism training many times over, using writing to persuade, to raise money for nonprofit organizations, and to showcase rural-healthcare initiatives. Most recently, I coordinated marketing efforts across print and digital channels for a professional-services firm whose architects and engineers design buildings for health, education, civic, and business clients. In that role I also focused my attention on process development and documentation, anticipating potential problems and devising clear ways forward, through, or around.
Throughout this work, I've learned that "simple" things taken for granted inevitably cause problems, wasted energy, and rework. Too often we try to solve human-behavior challenges with software and tools. We need to listen, to understand, and to learn from those in the position to know—just as I did when I went to the source during my years in the newsroom.
I'm a farm girl at heart, raising my family in the biggest little city in South Dakota. I'm passionate about the human issues that connect us all: the right to healthcare and education, to individual dignity, and to use our own voices in the world as we fight for what matters most.
Resume
