As much as I love words, I love working with people. Listening to you inspires me.
Understanding your vision helps me express it in creative ways.
As your consultant, I’m happy to join teams, create teams or act as a team of one. When you work with me, you benefit from my experience with large corporations, small businesses, nonprofits and entrepreneurs. Whether I’m writing stories, creating content, editing or consulting, I keep things running smoothly so you can focus on other things.
I work for all kinds of clients. The thing that brings my business into focus isn’t so much that I’ve specialized in a certain type of client as that I bring myself and my experience to every situation with every client.
Although I work primarily as a writer, my background as a managing editor makes me a strong project manager, and my agency and creative services experience have taught me a lot about strategy and collaboration. And, as a creative who has tremendous respect for designers, I know that the way a piece looks is just as important as how it reads — if not more so. My journalism background has shaped my consistent focus on the reader, and 12+ years at two member organizations — RCI and Kiwanis — sharpened skills that help me excel at internal communications.
As a writer, I’m known for clear, concise, understandable language and a warm tone, and that’s what I bring to projects for large corporations, small mom-and-pop shops and everything in between. Whether I’m working for a nonprofit, a government organization, a manufacturer or a financial services company, I aim to connect with people and inspire them to take action.
I’m a one-woman shop, but I’m bolstered by a strong team of subcontractors who help me when the workload gets high or when I need their expertise in certain areas. Sometimes a project will need someone with specialized skills or might be too big for just me. In that case, I’ll go out of my way to help find someone with the right skill set to add to the team.
I deeply value my ability to work for people I care about — and who care about me. This commitment drives my responsibility to my clients, especially to deadlines. If I tell a client I’m going to do something by a certain day, it’s going to be done by that day. It also means that I’ll bring people to the table who can give my clients exactly what their projects need.
I started my career in Oxford, England, working as a copyeditor for Elsevier Editorial Services, which publishes postdoctoral research papers. Learning to copyedit in Dutch and working with people from around the world sparked my interest in publishing and editing. When I got back to the States, I hatched a plan to move to New York City and launch my career as an editor in the children’s book publishing industry. I arrived in New York during the heyday of the picture book and learned quickly, working closely with inspiring writers, illustrators, editors, publishers and designers at Dial Books for Young Readers and Holiday House. I left NYC for Buffalo to pursue a painting degree — as well as my future husband — and became an editor at Buffalo Spree, a city magazine built on the New Yorker model, where I edited articles and short stories and wrote ad copy. A few years later, I married and moved to St. Louis, where I started out as a copyeditor at the city’s alternative weekly, The Riverfront Times, and worked my way up to a managing editor role at St. Louis Magazine. When my husband’s career as a creative writing professor brought us to Indianapolis, I joined RCI and experienced life as a trade magazine editor in the business-to-business space. That was a huge step away from traditional journalism into corporate editing. When the magazine ceased publication after the financial crisis of 2008, I became content manager for a cutting-edge travel app. After that, I moved into creative services. I got started as a copywriter at an agency, Hetrick Communications, then managed an in-house creative team at a nonprofit, Kiwanis International. In 2015, I launched my own freelance business.
All those experiences give me a lot to draw upon, whether I’m writing stories for a blog, developing messaging or collaborating with a creative team to develop content.
The fishtail fern in my office says a lot about my approach. It’s always right behind me on video calls, and my clients get to know it. That fern represents so much about the way I want to work, from the healthy relationship I foster with my clients to how I want to help their businesses grow. It’s a symbol of the fresh perspective I bring to projects. I joke about it, but I really mean it. That fern has a lot to say.
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