I began my career as a sign language interpreter and I have a BS in interpreter training from Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania.  For 14 years I interpreted for the Deaf in a wide variety of settings from state and federal institutions to being an on-call interpreter for 23 deaf employees at a defense agency.  I absolutely loved my job, but after dealing with chronic repetitive stress injuries for several years, I eventually had to make the tough decision to leave the field. 

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What came next for me was a mix of opportunities.  My time was split between being a stay-at-home mom to two girls and working on my photography business.  Then when my husband's start-up company, Sqord, needed photography services for their marketing and branding, I coordinated photography shoots to get the authentic imagery they needed. I had so much fun working with the kids and their parents and became really interested in the user experience side of things and worked with Sqord on quite a few different projects.   Sqord moved us to Seattle, WA  for one year and I continued to work with Sqord and build my photography business on the west coast.  When we moved back to Apex, NC  my husband founded a web application business, Lineweight.  I started out again by providing photography services for our clients, but began to realize that although, I loved photography, I did not love maintaining it as a business.  Instead, I wanted to get into the user experience side of things.  Working  with Lineweight, I provided site testing, copy editing, and wrote help content and created user flows of existing sites.  I also managed the Lineweight office at the American Underground in Durham.  My work experience has given me an introduction to the field of UX and a pretty general foundation.  To continue learning, I am working toward obtaining a Google UX Design Certificate and to further demonstrate my abilities, I’ve done a speculative redesign of a major health system's messaging portal, which you can see under My Work.

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Some other interesting things to know about me are that I still love photography and spending time behind my camera! I also enjoy (in no particular order), to spend time with my family (ok, maybe there is a particular order), game nights, movie nights, scrapbooking, walking, hiking, reading, going to the beach and playing grumpy rummy.  I also, love visiting the Endless Mountains in Pennsylvania, where I grew up. And most importantly as I’ve already mentioned, I'm a wife and a mom to two teenage girls (whose artistic abilities are insane) and a human to a dog and two kibbies (cats).

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I’m also an extrovert and I love to meet new people, so if you want to grab a cup of coffee (or in my case a frappe) and talk all things UX, please reach out!