Resumé

Interim Executive Director — Tiny News Collective

JUNE 2021 - PRESENT

The Tiny News Collective is an initiative dedicated to making starting and operating local news organizations more affordable and accessible to people from a vastly broader range of professional, educational and lived experiences than is currently represented in media ownership. The collective is the first of its kind project combining everything from technology to training to fiscal sponsorship to help people dedicated to providing quality local news successfully start and operate a local news organization. As interim ED, I’ve been involved with the creation and operation of the collective from its inception through News Catalyst and manage both day to day operations and long term strategic plans and partnerships. TinyNewsCo.org

Deputy Director for Product — News Catalyst

JANUARY 2020 - PRESENT

News Catalyst is multi-year project creating and providing training, technology and support to help news organizations move toward sustainable and effective operations through the thoughtful application of product driven process, the smart and efficient use of the right technologies and through partnerships and mutual learned. As the deputy director of product, I oversee our product training programs, consulting partnerships and research projects with all of our learnings and outcomes made public for the benefit of the field. News Catalyst works by partnering with a variety of organizations and supporting the creation and growth of projects such as the News Product Alliance and the Product Immersion for Small Newsrooms training program. NewsCatalyst.org

JULY 2015

Facet is an open-source infrastructure project that helps newsrooms manage the multifaceted challenge of planning and executing collaborative projects across platforms with partners of various sizes and resources. I’m a solo founder and have personally managed the overall project, scoped and coded the platform, designed the interfaces, and manage partnerships. Facet was a finalist for the Global Editors Network Startups for News competition in 2018. My work has been funded by the Knight Foundation and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.

Through my work with Facet, I’ve spent more than seven years researching collaborative journalism. My work on editorial collaboration is referenced in multiple academic studies including “Models of Collaborative Journalism” published Montclair University and supplemental materials for University of North Carolina’s Media Desert research as well as research published by the Tow Center. I’ve also frequently spoken on collaboration at conferences across the country. I serve on the steering committee for the Collaborative Journalism Summit, an annual conference on collaborative journalism. In 2018, I published the Collaborative Journalism Workbook, which has been translated into Spanish, French and Portuguese and is now in its second edition. I also serve as an advisor to the Info Districts project. Projectfacet.org

Researcher on Economic Inclusion — Membership Puzzle Project

JULY 2018 - JULY 2021

I researched the extent of efforts of newsrooms to create membership pathways for low and no income audiences and create equitable and mutually beneficial relationships with same. MembershipPuzzle.org

Published Work:

Researcher and Writer — Center for Cooperative Media

JULY 2018 - PRESENT

I contributed to the database of collaborative journalism projects worldwide, including coordinating and overseeing the translation of the database into Spanish and Portuguese. I also created and manage the collaborative journalism handbook website CollaborativeJournalismhandbook.org

Speaker, Digital Trainer — Online News Association Speakers Bureau

JANUARY 2018 - JUNE 2019

I designed and delivered digital journalism skills trainings to newsrooms across the US on technology adoption, collaboration, digital strategy, data journalism and other topics as requested. Journalists.org

Technology & Community Outreach Manager — JSK Journalism Fellowships, Stanford University

FEBRUARY 2018 - DECEMBER 2018

I designed and built a website and digital strategy for the Stanford Journalism and Democracy Project. My work included research and reporting on stories relevant to the work and interests of the fellowship across the topics of media and technology such as the impact on journalism and society by the current and future developments in algorithmically generated media technologies. In this work, I closely coordinate with Jay Hamilton, the director of the Stanford journalism program and Michael Bolden, the director of editorial operations for the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford. This work also includes advising JSK Fellows who aspire to build platforms or apps related to their fellowship research or are who focus on collaboration or information accessibility for vulnerable communities. JSK.stanford.edu / JDI.stanford.edu

John S. Knight Journalism Fellow — Stanford University

SEPT. 2016 - JUNE 2017
In 2016, I was honored to be named a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. During my time as a fellow, I worked with newsrooms to research the technical infrastructure of editorial workflows and and collaboration. I worked on the expansion of Project Facet as an ecosystem-building software initiative to support newsroom collaboration. I also wrote case studies, spoke at conferences, including the Online News Association, the association of Local Independent Online Newsrooms and Newsgeist and delivered workshops on designing effective collaborations. jsk.stanford.edu

Lab Instructor, Program Manager — Hackbright Academy

JANUARY 2015 - MARCH 2016 | MARCH 2016 - JULY 2016

During my time at Hackbright academy, a software engineering school, I occupied multiple instructional, advisory and management roles. In my work, I lectured on software engineering curriculum, and digital product development, advised students, managed lab experiences as well as edited and designed new curriculum components in addition to contributing to internal custom software that delivered the educational materials and surveyed students on the effectiveness of the curriculum itself along with its delivery. During the latter half of my employment, I structured and managed all aspects of delivering a white-label iteration of the Hackbright software engineer training program for the digital division of a global media and entertainment company. In that work, I created custom curriculum, trained and guided on-site education staff, structured custom education plans for individual students, planned and coordinated all special events and worked closely the representatives from the host company. hackbrightacademy.com

Digital Services Editor — KTOO Public Media

MAY 2012 - JULY 2015
I was hired for the newly created position of New Media Producer at KTOO at the beginning of their reorganization to a digital-first media company. My role was to assess and design the digital products that would represent three public media stations and the statewide television service, 360 North and Gavel Alaska.

I re-built and managed all of the web products increasing the pageviews of the flagship KTOO site tenfold in the first year with further increases in the following years. This work included training reporting staff on digital journalism, writing for the web and social media. KTOO.org was awarded the Best Media Website award from the Alaska Press Club for two years running during my tenure.
I was quickly advanced to Digital Services editor where I assigned, reported, edited and designed news content as part of a 3-person editorial team. My work included continued management of digital products, the production of analytics reports and recommendations for use in editorial and management decisions and the organization’s digital strategy. I also led digital training workshops internally and for CoastAlaska stations in the region on visuals for the web, social media and digital strategy. I was offered the KTOO News Director position toward the end of my tenure with the organization. I continue to do occasional consulting work for KTOO and work with KTOO and CoastAlaska on their collaborative efforts. ktoo.org

Prior to 2012

I was a student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I spent my first few years as a wildlife biology major before I happened upon a journalism class. That experience opened doors that I hadn't even realized existed prior to that. So I sort of threw away that time (but not really because three years of intensive higher level science education is extremely valuable still to this day) and changed my major to journalism.

Before changing degrees, I was a curatorial assistant in the Mammalogy Lab and the Museum of the North, home to the world's largest collection of Arctic research specimens. I participated in field work in Denali, prepped research specimens, documented specimens and assisted in maintaining the collection. I'm still a big science geek.

I worked for the student paper for two years, completely overhauling how it functioned, focused on the website and began exploring different forms of storytelling. During my time there, I built a salary database that covered the entire University of Alaska system which caused a fair bit of disruption. (One university employee member wrote a letter to the editor in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner comparing the database to abortion, stating "Just because an action is not illegal does not make it right."). I also did source audits of the newspaper's coverage (prior to the audit, university employees were the majority of quotes compared to students), branding strategy (there wasn't a logo and the cover design changed every week) and began laying the groundwork to separate the paper's funding from student government control.

I participated in multiple journalism training tracks in the journalism department including editorial, digital journalism and photojournalism.

Prior to 2006

I grew up in rural Missouri on a farm. Fun fact about me, I have my American FFA degree, the highest degree level in the National FFA organization. I still can't look at blue corduroy to this day.