Current Title: Art Director
Organization: Advance Local (Enterprise Team)
Country: United States of America
Bio
In my years as an Art Director, Creative Director, Design Editor and Designer, I’ve been lucky enough to have a diverse career and work with a great number of U.S. publications and global news media professionals. I’ve won multiple AP Awards (New York and Pennsylvania,) Ohio SPJ Awards, Ohio Excellence in Journalism Awards, Michigan Press Association Awards, Wisconsin Newspaper Association Awards, Best of Gannett Awards and an SND placement (that I am most proud of.)
I began my news media design career at The Blade, in Toledo, Ohio. In 1999, I joined the paper as a Marketing Graphic Designer. Although the position was supposed to be temporary, I discovered that I loved print media and journalism and that finding creative design solutions for important writing was rewarding, giving my life purpose. I moved to the Editorial side in 2002 where I worked with reporters and editors to create engaging presentations and graphics for stories about wartime atrocities (Tiger Force, 2004,) a corrupt Governor (Coingate, 2005,) and killer priests (The Murder of Sister Margaret Ann Puhl, 2006.) The Coingate investigation lead to the resignation of Ohio Governor Taft and ‘Tiger Force’ lead to a Pulitzer Prize win.
In 2006, I went to Green Bay, Wisconsin as Design Editor but the next year I returned to Toledo as Design Editor of the Toledo Free Press and then Make-up Editor of The Blade. From 2007 until 2011, I was allowed to rethink Features Design and come up with some creative and often unorthodox solutions.
In 2011, I went to Louisville as Features Team Leader of the Gannett Louisville Design Studio. A few months later, I had the chance to challenge myself like I never had, as Wisconsin Team Leader at the Gannett Des Moines studio. It meant leading 10 newspapers with varying focus and size into the studio system. I worked closely with their Editors to try new ideas and invest in creative solutions that were bold and visually compelling. I learned how important it is to give markets what they don’t know they need; excitement, ingenuity and bravado. In 2014, I was promoted to Creative Director of the Gannett Des Moines studio. I had the great honor to lead hundreds of emerging and seasoned designers to be their best. We worked with 22 separate news media sites that ranged in size and focus in the Midwest and Central South.
Currently, I’m an Art Director with Advance Local. The position has let me really expand my skills as an Illustrator, Interactive and print graphics designer and visual researcher. I get to work with people that I greatly admire and it has been incredibly exciting to be accepted in this world of important ideas and stories. Great journalism and truth-telling is globally critical now more than ever. I am deeply proud to be part of the community fighting to deliver on this need.
I work from my quiet wooded home in Toledo, Ohio, a city that I love. I have two teenage sons and a husband of 26 years.