I have over 15 years of experience crafting brilliant copy in pretty much every form—content design and UI text, help and technical articles, marketing content, video scripting and production, and error messages and notifications. My passion is creating all-up content strategies, building cross-discipline working relationships, and delivering world class customer experiences.

Principal UX content Designer, Microsoft

April 2018 to Present

  • Designed all content for Microsoft Power Automate for Desktop, a suite of products and features that help customers automate redundant work.

  • Led the incorporation of AI (Copilot) into our product spaces from top to bottom, including new account creation, the ability to record words and actions that automatically create workflows, and AI assistance for automatic error repair.

  • Owned all UX content for Azure IoT, a $5B suite of products that encompasses consumer, developer, and IT Pro audiences. Specific product areas included IoT Central (Microsoft’s flagship app platform for IoT), Device Twins, IoT Edge, and IoT Platform.

  • Individually supported a team of 500+ engineers, crafting content that fundamentally altered how we speak to customers and partners.

  • Designed content that speaks to technical audiences, consumers, and business decision makers. Authored all content for IoT user roles, which define customer characteristics based on job roles and form the basis for all new products our org creates.

  • Created all of the underlying content for Azure and Azure IoT’s diversity and inclusion posters, used throughout the company in D+I messaging.

  • Analyzed usage metrics, partnered with Research to uncover critical findings, and interviewed users to understand opportunities for content improvement. This feedback was an integral part of my content planning cycle, and formed the basis for a true customer-centric content philosophy.

Senior UX writer, Microsoft Azure

February 2013 to April 2018

  • Lead the QA effort for Microsoft Azure, which included creating a strategy for new content, onboarding program managers responsible for new articles, and leading over 50 cross-discipline peer reviews prior to publishing.

  • Reviewed and signed off on UX content for more than 50 new Microsoft Azure services. This involved early conversations with the respective engineering teams for each service, a review of the current designs to make sure we weren't just writing around problem UX, and time spent reworking the content with UX designers.

  • Authored UX guidelines, which include UX-specific best practices and design elements. Worked with the principal design manager to come up with a list of articles, tech reviewed the content with engineering partners, and then published final content. Engineering partners (and their own design teams) have adopted this content as the source of truth for all new Azure extensions.

  • Trained 75 writers and editors in the principles of Modern Voice. Training sessions lasted between 4 and 6 hours, and covered each voice principle: Identifying the intent, using everyday words, writing concisely, making content easy to scan, and showing empathy.

  • Identified a business requirement for a way to evangelize new features. I created a spec, wrote our initial service and feature announcements, and worked with our engineering team to ship a “Service Updates” page.

Senior Writer, Microsoft Office

January 2010 to February 2013

  • Led the “What’s New in Office 2013” video project, which highlighted new consumer-focused cloud features in Microsoft Office. This included project scheduling, managing vendor resources, and responsibility for a team of 12 writers.

  • Drove the branding, voice, user scenario, and content creation plans for a V1 product aimed at educators and students.

  • Edited UI strings and help content to ensure adherence to voice and style guidelines.

  • Created content packages for Office.com that included Help, Video content, blog posts, and downloadable content.

  • Owned the Office relationship with the Education Product Group, which included working with product planners to create Office.com web content, Education-related blog posts, and marketing materials for teachers and students.

  • Created and managed a cross-discipline Content Partnership Council, ensuring that content publishing aligned with engineering and marketing initiatives.

Content Publishing Manager/Senior Technical Writer, Microsoft adCenter

January 2006 to January 2010

  • Managed two technical writing teams (including writers and editors) located in Redmond, San Francisco, Denver, and Raleigh. My teams were tasked with content support for adCenter Display advertising, which included multiple products and engineering teams.

  • Conducted Usability testing for Display advertising products, and conducted multiple site visits. Feedback from this user research was immediately implemented into my team’s content and product workflows.

  • Conducted site visits with engineering partners in San Francisco and Raleigh, NC to identify areas where we could improve content quality.

  • Created a Help dashboard, a new page in the UI that exposed top user issues, links to blogs and communities, and research and best practices links.

  • Created all copy for email marketing campaigns aimed at online advertisers.

Education

Bachelor of Arts in English

Western Washington University