Let me tell you about myself...
I have been practicing usability research and interaction design since 2010. I grew up in Rochester, NY and am currently living in Baltimore, MD. I am a wife, mother, singer, and percussionist.
I and have a total of four degrees. Two Associates in Office Technology and Liberal Arts, a Bachelors in Informatics, and a Masters in Human-Computer Interaction.
I got into the design field because I have a passion for creating web sites. I began developing when I was in high school (graduated 2002). On the side, I volunteer to maintain the websites of the organizations in which I belong. The organizations I have worked with include:
- Webster High School Marching Band (2006-2010)
- Capitol Showcase Chorus (2012-2013)
- Pride of Baltimore Chorus (2013-2020)
- Dundalk Star Spangled Chorus (2021-Present)
In 2008 I worked part-time as a web developer for a local Buffalo, NY business called RLComputing during my undergraduate program at the University at Buffalo. There, I helped to maintain existing client websites and coded new sites by converting HTML sites in a table layout (provided by the graphic designer) into a CSS2 style layout.
While completing my graduate work at Rochester Instutite of Technology, I aquired an 11 month internship at Eastman Kodak with their user experience group. I conducted many usability studies on their digital still and video cameras, as well as some software and mobile applications.
After my internship, I moved to Columbus, OH for a six-month contract with Nationwide Insurance. As a Usability Analyst there, I conducted user studies on both their external and internal websites.
At the end of 2012, I moved to Baltimore, MD where I started by public sector career for Northrop Grumman contracting for the Social Security Administration (SSA). At Northrop, I was assigned to the the team that manages the web standards that are applied to all applications across the Agency.
In 2016, I accepted a position with SSA as a federal employee and became the project lead for the SSA Design System Team. I lead a team of designers, developers, analysts, and platform specialists (Pega and ServiceNow). Our team provides governance and consistency for the look and feel of applications across the agency. The design System provides data-driven design solutions creating the most optimal user experience.