Work
Dedicated to the craft of creativity.
I've built a career around bringing creativity to bear on the needs of learners in a professional setting. For nearly twenty years I've studied and learned the discipline of Learning & Development, and in that time I've amassed a broad body of experience. Some highlights are below.
I joined the Energy North team in November 2023 as the company's Learning Experience Designer. I was excited at the prospect of learning an entirely new industry, as well as the move from a global organization to a smaller, more tightly focused regional one. To rise to the challenge, I've leaned on all the experience I've gathered as an instructional designer, employee brand manager, communications lead, and corporate trainer.
I'm responsible for a monthly employee safety training program, geared specifically towards office team members. Each month, I research, design, develop, deploy, and evaluate the results of a unique online learning experience. These experiences are short, dynamic, unobtrusive learnings that approach a variety of topics in unique ways. Below you can take the short module I developed focused on workplace stress.
In early 2023 I started my own professional creative studio, and took on freelance work. This allowed me to hone skills such as video production for social media.
Zakuska Vodka:
Instagram Reel
Instagram Reel
This is a 60-second Instagram reel I created for Zakuska, a Brooklyn-based vodka brand. I recorded all video and audio in the field and produced the final video using Davinci Resolve. As a special bonus, at the client's request I wrote, performed and produced the original music!
Zakuska_IGStory_60_101523.mp4
ld-12-behaviors-053019.mp4Little Details: Video-based microlearning
As the L&D SME for the Brand Management team of Bose Corporation, I was responsible for teaching over 6,000 employees across the globe about the core tenets of the brand, and how to activate them in their work. The Little Details video series was a way to quickly convey concepts and learning, and fostered in-depth discussions about how to bring the brand to life. This is a brief video to engage the employees on the brand behaviors.
Connecting culture through storytelling.
When an organization has employees scattered around the world, working on a broad range of disciplines, it's important to highlight what connects them. Effective storytelling widens the avenues that those connections can travel, and allows for employees to feel connected to a greater purpose and common goal.
At Bose, there was no shortage of stories to tell. One way those stories got told was through the Mountaineers- a brand advocacy group, open to all Bose employees, of which I was the program manager. Employees could sign up to be a Mountaineer by completing a short online training I developed, highlighting group norms, goals, and Bose history. Once the training was complete, they'd receive invites to a monthly program called "Summit Sessions", which I hosted.
Each month, the event would unfold akin to a podcast or variety show, with a broad range of segments focused on relevant topics. Interviews with product managers, personal brand workshops, group discussions, and special guests were featured, all with the idea of bolstering the culture, and providing opportunities for employees to grow and learn about what made the company unique.
What better place to tell stories than around a campfire? With pandemic restrictions easing, we were able to move the monthly sessions from the virtual realm to in person, and we created a live campfire set for a conversation with Dan Gauger, a 42-year veteran of Bose and pioneer of the noise cancelling technology first envisioned by Dr. Bose in the 70's. Dan and I had a genuine conversation at our "campsite", and live attendees and virtual attendees around the world listened as he shared stories of his successes and struggles throughout the years, and how those moments were a part of the unique company culture of Bose.
I also invited prominent thinkers from outside Bose to join us on occasion. One highlight was a conversation with Dr. Sara Seager, MIT astrophysicist and leading researcher in the field of exoplanets. Dr. Seager's work was instrumental in making the James Webb Space Telescope a reality, and when we talked to her, she gave us a sneak peek of how she hoped to use the telescope to explore the depths of unknown space, and lead the search for planets that could potentially host life.
Why have an astrophysicist come speak to employees of an audio company? Dr. Seager's day-to-day work might not have a lot of overlap with Bose- but she's a dynamic trailblazer in a relatively new field with stories to tell about how to grow, learn, be curious, and explore. All tenets that drove Bose since its beginning. In the end, it doesn't matter the field- having the desire to be your best self is a fundmental building block for success, and through conversations with her, Dan, and others, I was able to demonstrate that for employees across the globe.
On-air talent.
From 2010-2020, I had the unique pleasure of representing Bose on-air on a number of different home shopping channels. At first, going on television seemed like an incredibly daunting task. Millions of people are watching at any given moment, and every single appearance is 100% live- there's no do-overs! My trepidation quickly gave way to excitement at the opportunity, and over the years I appeared hundreds of times on QVC, HSN, and Canada's The Shopping Channel. Was the highlight selling literally millions of dollars worth of products, or the fact that Joan Rivers told me I was a "fabulous" dancer? I can't decide.