ABOUT ME
Been around the block many times ... lots of blocks. And I’ve worn many hats.
My career in social media and digital engagement began as a communications student at the University of Texas at Austin. Since then, I’ve managed social media for two boutique East Side restaurant openings and a winning volunteer fundraising campaign for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Central Texas, raising a record-breaking $126k. Most recently, I spent four years developing and then heading social media marketing for a major national insurance brokerage and consultant.
Some of my proudest accomplishments in that role included:
Developing and managing a holistic social media marketing program with deep integration into our digital strategy alongside brand, content and PR strategies
Establishing core KPIs and achieving significant growth year over year; developing and standardizing a system of measurement and presenting results directly to C-Suite stakeholders
Instituting national training programs and presentations on leveraging social media for our executives, top sales producers, HR business partners and interns
Managing development and promotion of a PanelPicker submission on capital investment partnerships which was selected for inclusion in the 2019 SXSW Interactive Conference
STILL WITH ME?
Ok, here comes the deep background, for those who are interested:
I was born in Chicago, which is still my favorite city in the U.S. (take the Architecture Society’s boat tour next time you’re there). But I mostly grew up in the suburbs just outside Dallas. Here’s a fun bit of totally random trivia for you: of the four members of my nuclear family — mom, dad, brother and me — all four of us went to high school with people who later became pretty famous actors: My mom with Morgan Fairchild (Dallas, Murphy Brown) at Lake Highlands, my dad with Stephen Tobolowsky (Groundhog Day, Silicon Valley) at Kimball, and my brother and me with Jensen Ackles (Days of Our Lives, Supernatural) at Berkner. No, I cannot get you an autograph.
My academic background spans the performing arts, communication studies, and history. I earned an Associate of Applied Arts in Acting Performance nearly 20 years ago now, after having previously studied musical theatre including several levels of acting courses, ballet, jazz, and modern dance, vocal performance, choral music, and music theory. My freshman year of BFA, I had roles in The Threepenny Opera (Brecht & Weil), The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Christopher Durang), and HAiR: The American Tribal Love Rock Musical (Ragni, Rado & MacDermot). After completing my Associate’s, I co-founded a mercurial little art collective in Deep Ellum, Dallas, and hosted some pretty wild events and a bit of performance art theatre.
That led to a whirlwind three-and-a-half year gig as a singer in the choir of an internationally recognized Texas export, a band of symphonic pop rock misfits known as The Polyphonic Spree. In addition to singing, sweating, emoting and arranging, my duties included serving as tech lead and venue liaison for the choir, assistant director of an original multimedia theatrical event, and representing the band in interviews for MTV, BBC Radio One, The Dallas Observer and The Stanford Gazette. Among our international touring, performance, recording, and press for live, studio, music video, radio, photo, television, and film venues and media, it was an honor to perform on the main stages of both the Glastonbury Music and Arts Festival and the Coachella Valley Festival. I’ll never forget sharing the stage with legendary artists such as David Bowie, Queen, Patti Labelle, Cyndi Lauper and Oprah Winfrey. Televised appearances included The Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s Concert for Peace, the MTV Video Music Awards, the inaugural UK Music Hall of Fame Awards, V Graham Norton, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Later with Jools Holland, Top of the Pops, and Scrubs. During my tenure, we earned a Silver Record for sales of our debut album, The Beginning Stages Of... (BPI, U.K.); three Top-40 Singles (U.K.); and the #1 spot on the Billboard U.S. Heat Seekers Chart for our second studio album, Together We’re Heavy. Being part of the Spree was a tremendous privilege: I got to travel all over the world and I’m incredibly grateful. Ask me sometime about my favorite moments and I’ll tell you some stories.
I decided to leave the band at the end of 2004 in order to go back to school. After moving to Austin and completing two part-time semesters at Austin Community College, I transferred to the University of Texas as a liberal arts student majoring in history. But after being accepted to the College of Communications the following semester, I switched my major to the bachelor of science program in Communication Studies with an emphasis in Political Communication and Rhetorical Theory. I absolutely loved it — these were in some ways the best, most enriching years of my life. In addition to doing a ton of writing, this is also (incidentally) where I started formally studying social media. Some of the highlights of my university experience include being inducted into Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society, having my essay on James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room selected for my professor’s doctoral teaching portfolio, having one of my original speeches for my Speechwriting and Criticism survey selected as an instructional example for future semesters of the course, and being selected as a competitive travel grant recipient to attend the National Communication Association’s annual academic conference in Chicago as a member of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship Cross-Disciplinary Consortium’s Pre-graduate Internship. However, as a “returning” (read: older) student struggling with the isolation of academic life and frankly, the financial burden of college, I left UT just one requirement short of graduating. Maybe one day I’ll complete that lingering credit and finally finish my degree, but I learned what I set out to learn and fortunately, not having that piece of paper hasn’t stood in my way yet.
Throughout my time as both an artist and a student, I did as many of both do to get by and learned the ropes of the service industry. I’m proud of my 18 year career in hospitality — there is a tremendous joy in caring for people through service and facilitating incredible experiences for guests that many will hopefully cherish long after. After leaving university, I built on my experience in fine dining and developed managerial skills in restaurants, catering companies and high-end hotels as a trainer and catering events lead, media dinner server, and eventually as restaurant manager and maître d'. It was in these roles that I beginning applying my social media and PR training in professional environments — creating and posting content, engaging with audiences, identifying and positioning the brand, integrating digital properties, managing SEO, and coordinating media and press opportunities. This allowed me to hone my skills and get hands-on experience that served me well soon after as I transitioned into the corporate world.
Beyond that, I’m passionate about music, art and movies, and obviously good food, good drinks and good company. I believe in the power of language, design and imagery and I think there’s still a lot of good social media can and does bring into our lives despite some of its negative implications. I try to be socially conscious and culturally engaged and to conduct myself according to an ethic of mutual respect and in particular, of looking and listening deeply into the stories and experiences of others in order to understand context, empathize and connect. And I love to help. So please let me know how I might be able to help you. And thanks for listening :)
