Experience

Principal Content Strategist at CrowdStrike, June 2017 – present

Brought in during the startup phase to establish the UX writing and technical writing disciplines. Post-IPO, our UX Writing discipline has over 15 people, many of whom I mentor and sponsor.
Crafted the initial voice principles and style guide.
Created the framework for how we present security detections to customers. Outcomes included broad praise from customers, guidelines for the engineering team that writes the detections, and a well-received conference presentation on how to explain security to non-security stakeholders.
Drove consistent language throughout the end-to-end journey, from backend APIs to the user interface, and into guides and messaging.
Contributed to flagship projects, partnering closely with designers, PMs, researchers, and engineers. This involved co-owning design source files and the end-to-end journey, balancing business and customer goals, defining generative and evaluative research goals, and ensuring technical feasibility.
Helped author our Code of Conduct and critique guidelines to foster a supportive, collaborative team.
Senior leadership recognized my demonstrated value of content design and strategy with a promotion to Principal, the first non-engineer to reach that level.

Established voice principles for “the trusted salesperson,” illustrating how to bring the in-person customer service reputation to our digital experiences. Created writing guidelines and workshops to help UX designers who weren’t paired with writers.
Helped build and mentor Nordstrom’s inaugural UX Writing team. Started the practice of UX Writers showing content explorations at design reviews.
Owned all content during the overhaul of our product details page. A highlight was running A/B content tests that showed urgency messaging generated substantially higher sales.
In response to my contributions, my leadership team added the Principal level for UX Writers so they could promote me.

Founded the UX writing fundamentals course at School of Visual Concepts so we could grow the discipline in Seattle. I co-taught the first 3 sessions and still teach there.
Hired students from the program at both Nordstrom and CrowdStrike.

Contributed to Microsoft’s major voice shift from robotic to human by writing for their new app suite.
Created content plans and wrote all related content for Windows Store. Worked closely with PMs and designers. I focused on guiding the customer to the next step, emphasizing a positive experience and reducing abandonment.
Analyzed user research and website data to identify what to write. Monitored site analytics for ways to improve SEO and content ratings. After identifying content gaps and usability issues on a page, the rewritten page’s rating increased 65% which led to tracking and improvements on similar pages.

Primary user researcher and designer for a mobile app for learning Mandarin with flashcards inspired by a user’s location. Led project’s research phase, analyzed data to identify our target audience, designed the interface and copy, and contributed to the CHI paper. (Microsoft Research in Beijing)
Designed and implemented an improved reporting system for a refugee training program. Turned an Excel spreadsheet into a lightweight app, saving several hours a month. Wrote user and troubleshooting guides so the staff could be self-sufficient after I left. (Entity Green Training in Amman, Jordan)
Designed the UI for tracking data from health centers in Malawi. Created a style guide to help app developers design for users in low-resource environments. (Village Reach in Seattle)