From 1995-2008 I worked in advertising photography. My work involved assisting photographers as a lighting and camera technician, as well as making my own images and shooting for companies like Red Envelope and Sundance.
Working in photography was like having a backstage pass to everything.
Photography took me into Al Green's dressing room for the New Yorker, brought me on set with Steve Jobs and Sheryl Crow, and allowed me to rig the lighting for the 2004 Newsweek cover that introduced Larry Page and Sergei Brin to the world. I logged weeks in Apple's secret photo studio shooting the iPhone prototype, worked closely with photographer Larry Sultan on intimate celebrity portraits, and spent countless hours in beautiful locations all over California selling, among other things, the Williams Sonoma dream.
Agile, collaborative, and fast is the name of the game in advertising photography. I honed those skills on hundreds of shoots and sets, and those skills have stuck with me to this day.
In the summer of 2008, I sublet my apartment in Oakland, and moved to Omaha, Nebraska to work as Digital Director on a U.S. Senate Campaign. It was a mix of idealism as well as disruption in the photography industry that led me to drop everything, pivot, and go to work on a long shot political campaign. It turned out that the writing and social media skills I'd been building while writing online as an early blogger served me well.
As Digital Director, reporting directly to current MSNBC host Alicia Menendez, I spent months mapping an aggressive digital communications calendar, creating website content, and working with a team of energetic fellow staffers on every aspect of the campaign, including raising much needed funds. Returning to California, I stretched myself by using my new skills to work with nonprofits. I served as Digital Program Manager for a statewide CA healthcare nonprofit, consulted for social good organizations and campaigns, and worked directly for organizations like SFMOMA and Cal-Asia (now a part of the Asia Society.)
Nonprofit communications allowed me to hone critical skills including press relations, digital advertising, website strategy, and user journey design.
I've worked in technology marketing since 2017, when I joined B2B SaaS Enterprise Software company Apptio as a Content Marketing Manager for their subsidiary Apptio Digital Fuel. After exceeding global upsell and retention goals at Digital Fuel in 2018, in 2019 I took responsbility for Apptio's North American Customer Marketing encompassing 300 North American accounts, marketing program for 25 Account Managers, and a reboot of Apptio's national Local User Group program.
Most recently, I worked from 2021 through December 2022 in Product Marketing at Google Cloud on the Global Customer Programs team working on Customer Reference content for major events, including Google Cloud NEXT and Google Cloud's major product Summits. I also led two global customer evidence program initiatives on the TechValidate and Vocal Video platforms.
Google Cloud was a fascinating place to work; serving as a Vendor via Netchannels, I learned a ton over my two years! Whether rolling out and rebooting Scaled Programs like the global customer survey program TechValidate (examples SAP, Looker, Workspace, SMB, Cloud Certification) and the social video program Vocal Video (ex, Tony Jebara (Spotify), Amanda Furtado Brinhosa (Portal Telemedicina), Tony Safoian (SADA), Michal Jablonski (Aiven), Suraj Singh (i6), Theresa Woo (TELUS), or collaborating directly with Product Marketing leads securing customer evidence for product launches and presentations at events like NEXT '21 and NEXT '22 and numerous Global Product Summits (ex. Google Cloud Applied ML Summit), every marketing program I worked on at Google Cloud was cross functional, global, and highly collaborative. One highlight was taking the lead for Customer References for the Google Cloud Toronto Region Launch within days of starting at Google Cloud. In a matter of weeks, I delivered customers (including Telus, Shopify and Scotiabank), content, and insights for an event that helped Google Cloud grow and compete in the Canadian market.
To learn more, please check out my Content Marketing portfolio, review my CV, or view some of my Marketing Case Studies.