I like building things, although what counts as a “thing” has gotten increasingly difficult to explain over the years.
Some of what I’ve built is easy to point to: websites, campaigns, training programs, content systems, communities, events, educational resources and organizations. Other things are less tangible. I’ve built processes that made complicated work easier to manage, programs that helped people learn something new, and systems that started as “there has to be a better way to do this.”
This isn’t meant to be a traditional portfolio. Some of these projects belong to employers, some are entirely mine, and some were deeply collaborative. They span different industries, different stages of my career and very different definitions of success.
What they have in common is that I had a hand in making something exist that didn’t exist in quite that form before.
At Work
A lot of my professional work happens at the intersection of content, technology, systems and people. I’m usually happiest when a project has enough moving parts that someone needs to figure out how they all fit together.
Over the years, that has included building and managing online communities, digital marketing programs, content operations, social strategies, partner education and certification programs, podcast publishing systems, websites and digital experiences, SEO and AEO initiatives, campaign frameworks, and the processes that keep all of those things from becoming chaos.
Some were projects I created from scratch. Others already existed and needed to be reorganized, expanded or made substantially more useful.
Explore my professional work →
Tabby’s Tiny Tabbies
I did not originally have “build a nonprofit animal rescue” on my project list, but life had other ideas.
Tabby’s Tiny Tabbies grew from helping individual cats into a foster-based nonprofit with its own website, adoption program, intake and medical processes, educational resources, fundraising, community outreach, partnerships and an ever-evolving collection of systems for keeping track of a lot of tiny moving parts.
Building it has required me to use skills from almost every previous stage of my career, while learning an entirely new field at the same time. It is both one of the most practical things I’ve ever built and one of the most personal.
Creative Things
Not everything I make needs a business objective.
I’ve spent much of my life making things simply because I wanted to see whether I could. That has included music, writing, websites, visual projects, events, experiments and whatever else has captured my attention long enough to become something tangible.
Creative work is also often where I learn new tools. I am much more likely to learn something when I have an actual thing I want to make with it than when I’m following a tutorial for its own sake. Quite a few skills that eventually became professionally useful started with me thinking, “I wonder if I can make this.”
Systems Count Too
Some of the things I’m proudest of would make terrible portfolio screenshots.
A good system often becomes almost invisible once it works. Information is where people expect it to be. Repetitive work happens consistently. Someone new can understand what to do without relying on institutional folklore. The people using the system spend less time fighting it and more time doing the work it was supposed to support in the first place.
I like that kind of building just as much as making something you can see. Give me a pile of disconnected tools, information and requirements, and there is a very good chance I will start drawing relationships between them until a structure emerges.
Still Building
This list is never going to be finished, partly because I’m not particularly good at leaving interesting problems alone.
Some projects become substantial enough to deserve their own place here. Others are small improvements that matter mostly to the handful of people who use them. Both count.
For me, building has never really been about making things for the sake of making them. I build because something is missing, something could work better, or I have an idea I want to test in the real world.
Sometimes all three.