A bit about me. I grew up in Wisconsin in a small rural town between Milwaukee and Madison and attended college at the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater. Where I earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Multimedia and a Minor in Marketing. After college, I was fortunate enough to have a relative in Austin that was willing to set me up so I could pursue a career.
About 15 years later I’ve spent all of my professional career working in L&D. Starting out as a multimedia guru at National Instruments. My aunt was able to get me an interview with the Manager of L&D (whom I’m still very close to 15 years later). I was brought on board and I may or may not have never returned to my job at Sears. I spent time working with a designer for a few weeks before I was handed lead development on this project. Mind you, this was my first gig and rapid development tools were not even a thing yet. I had to earn my stripes in this role and learned a lot about development, audio, video, web, 3d, LMS, graphic design, and ActionScript. I recently came across an old email chatting with a colleague about video and saw the code “import mx.video.*;” HAHA.
After releasing a few projects with that team, we got the news our team was being laid off. I then took a role with IBM, doing training there as well. I learned a lot about audio there and really started to get more into the technology side of things as I became part of the Tivoli Technical Enablement team. I spent a few years working on HTML content, working with technical folks, and learning a lot about audio setup.
After a few years, an opportunity came up at Dell. I came on board as a contractor to build out some training. I ended up in a small room with 2 other contractors, one working on photoshop. I was able to show them a few things in the tool. A few months later I heard of an open role on a Sales Enablement team and applied. I landed the job and started full-time, working on Technical Sales Training for Enterprise solutions (servers, technology, and software). I continued here for about 2 years, learning a lot about video production and shooting video.
I eventually took a job at National Instruments, and this is when things got interesting. I continued doing a lot of the things I have been doing, but here I had access to Microsoft Azure. This allowed me the opportunity to really dig in and find out what I was/am passionate about. In my downtime I was able to build prototypes of whatever I wanted. I leveraged my background experience in 3d modeling/animation and built out an Augmented Reality app that would identify a piece of hardware, then display some information about the hardware. I also got into some AI work, by building a chatbot. These two proof of concepts were the first time I got to innovate in the EdTech space. I also got to get into User Experience, as NI sent me to pick up a certificate at General Assembly in UX. I was able to apply those skills by working on a badging program that is still in use today.
I did a short stint at McKinsey, as an integration specialist. I learned a lot about how to leverage tools to test courses and see what the course is doing. We had to make sure no McK data was being leaked and I got really involved with Chrome Developer tools. At the end of the day, it wasn’t a great cultural fit and mutually decided we should separate.
I went onto Vrbo, part of Expedia Group, where I had one of the most impactful and amazing teams I’ve ever been on. I started as a contractor and quickly built 5-6 eLearning courses, all while I was meeting new people. I turned down a few job offers during this time because I had a feeling about this team. It all worked out, as I was offered a full-time role. At about the same time our team got converted from Vrbo, to Expedia Group. We expanded and this enabled me the opportunity to work with more people, one of which was an expert in Adult Learning Theory. Up until this point, I worked in a lot of ISD-type roles, but never really understood Bloom’s Taxonomy, Learning Styles, etc. I started to understand more about learning models, how people learn, and even thinking through different learning paths. I was able to apply all of this in my role at Expedia. I mentored 2 people in ISD and even built out a curriculum that had a core in Adult Learning, but then branched off into Techincal and Creative tracks.
There’s still more (Tesla and Target) to come, but I need to run for now.