Storyteller, Marketing Communications Manager, Microsoft Workplace Intelligence, 2018-present

On Microsoft’s Workplace Intelligence marketing team, I manage a thought leadership program that explores and illuminates the data-driven future of work. I create high-profile, external-facing multimedia stories and marketing campaigns that help show the world how behavioral data can solve complex organizational problems and make life better for workers. Collaborating with some of the smartest thought leaders and solution design experts who are re-imagining the way we work, I explore how humans can be more productive, more effective, more balanced, and feel happier. My work includes building and managing the thought leadership website Workplace Insights, creating and executing a strategic editorial calendar of journalistic stories, white papers, case studies, technical content, webinars, videos, and other content formats; and acting as a key driver of earned media in order to generate leads and build awareness for both the people analytics and employee wellbeing categories and Microsoft’s Workplace Analytics and MyAnalytics products.

Communications Manager | Managing Editor – Microsoft, 2016-2018

As the Managing Editor for Microsoft’s Employer Branding Microsoft Life team, I helped drive an editorial and content strategy that showcases how employees live the Microsoft culture and future employees and curious outsiders perceive it. On our culture storytelling team, I honed brand voice and inspired audience engagement. I developed, edited, and wrote original feature stories and campaigns on topics ranging from the launch of a new kind of modern workplace, to the evolution of chatbots, to the world’s most purrfect employee cat group. To ensure a robust, unique, inspiring, and ever-evolving culture story, I planned and maintained a content calendar, project managed editorial and creative workflow, and coached a team of writers, photographers, and graphic designers. I managed and curated Microsoftlife.com and, employing my experience with website architecture and taxonomy, helped guide the site through a redesign. Collaborating with internal and external stakeholders, I developed campaign creative from concept through execution and I used data to consistently drive engagement and measure success.

Microsoft Life and my work was recently featured by Contently as one of the top 5 companies that have figured out how to blend culture, messaging, and human resources.

Projects include a multimedia #Pride campaign; a strategic story about innovative treehouse offices that spurred more than 100 instances of earned media coverage around the globe; a project about how chatbots are changing human relationships; a peek behind the curtain of the largest employee giving program in the world; anthem and campaign videos; and a delight story about cat-obsessed Microsofties blending their work and pet passions into the purrfect mix.

Previously in this role I served as the Managing Editor of MSW, the company’s employee communications portal. In that role, I was the editor and senior writer for the employee storytelling program, which showcased innovation and culture change inside the company; I edited and marketed the weekly internal newsletter, distributed to more than 130,000 employees globally; I curated and programmed the home page daily; coached and developed writers; and I partnered with stakeholders, executives, and teams across the company to amplify top news.

I am a content strategist; freelance journalist and content creator; editorial and storytelling consultant, author; blogger; essayist; em-dash admirer.

I report and write news and narrative profiles for freelance clients including The Seattle Times, The Washington Post, the Harvard Law Bulletin, the ACLU, and University of Washington; I have blogged at ParentMap, Huffington Post, and Mamapedia; I have worked as a content strategist for news magazines and as a legal researcher and commentator for InSession (formerly Court TV), I publish literary nonfiction essay pieces in journals and anthologies; I edit copy and content on a project basis.

I developed “J School in a Day” workshop, which launched in 2016 with the Society of Professional Journalists Western Washington. Drawing writers, marketers, subject-matter experts, and academics from around the region, the workshop teaches the basics of journalistic storytelling from a panel of experts and helps attendees assemble their own tool kits to help tell better stories in their work.

I developed and lead the “How to Pitch An Editor, Not Piss Her Off” workshop at media and writing conferences, universities, and organizations to help marketers and others be most effective pitching content and stories for earned media.

I am the author of “California Calling: A Self-Interrogation,” released March 1, 2018 from Hawthorne Books. The book won First Runner Up in January 2017 for the Red Hen Press national nonfiction book contest, and I was a finalist in Fall 2016 for the Autumn House Press national book contest. I am a contributing author to the 2015 YA anthology “Love and Profanity: A Collection of True, Tortured, Wild, Hilarious, Concise, and Intense Tales of Teenage Life.”