About.
I’m a UX-savvy content designer, content strategist, and digital consultant based in Brooklyn. I’m passionate about uncluttered communication, modular design systems, and user experience in a broad sense.
Recently.
I’ve been freelancing since 2013. For the last several years, I’ve been working on a lot of civic tech and govtech projects for state governments and municipalities, via digital agencies and entities such as Nava PBC, Bloom Works, and NYC Digital Service. I’m especially proud of my recent work on benefits platforms for the states of Nebraska and California.
Since going freelance a decade ago, I’ve consulted for dozens of companies and organizations, including MIT, MetLife, JetBlue, IBM, Cole Haan, SAG-AFTRA, Volvo, Swing Left, Chase, AARP, Verizon, and The Nation. Sometimes I work solo for private clients such as JetBlue. More often, I freelance with teams at prominent digital/branding agencies, including Razorfish, AKQA, Blue State, SY/Partners, Rokkan, VSA Partners, Huge, and Sullivan.
Visit the Work page for details about some (mostly) recent projects.
Previously.
From 2009 to 2013, I was the director of content strategy at Blue State, the agency best known for its role in Barack Obama’s two presidential campaigns. I was pulled into Blue State’s orbit when I helped relaunch WhiteHouse.gov at the beginning of 2009, just in time for President Obama’s inauguration.
As a department head and senior leader at Blue State, I was deeply involved with everything from creative planning and deliverables to business development, hiring, and staff procedures. I personally advised dozens of Blue State clients, including the Sundance Institute & Film Festival, the Ford Motor Company, Carnegie Hall, Vogue, Human Rights Campaign, NAACP, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Youthfully.
I have a strong foundation in traditional editorial work: I began my career in book publishing and spent a long time as a magazine editor and writer, lastly at Vanity Fair, where I was the online editor for two years and then a contributing editor for several more. I was also the final managing editor of Lingua Franca, the National Magazine Award–winning publication about ideas and intellectual conflicts in the world of academia; it was sort of a cross between The New Yorker and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
These days I don’t write much for publication, but my articles, essays, and art have appeared in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Lingua Franca, Metropolis, The Village Voice, the U.K. Independent, Book, The New York Sun, Civilization, Newsday, Print, Time Out New York, Columbia Journalism Review, and other places.
Geographically.
I grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, a wonderful, idyllic college town that was the setting for the Oscar-winning 1979 coming-of-age film Breaking Away. I moved to New York for college and have been here pretty much ever since.
I now reside in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and man, do I love it here.
Non-pumpkin photos on this page by Julia Hembree.
