I wrote my first resume at 14 to land a waitressing job at The Sports Page restaurant. I got hired on the spot and by the end of the week my friends were asking me to write theirs.

I have been doing some version of this work ever since.

I have been a writer for as long as I can remember and published my first piece of writing in my junior year of high school. Since then I have been writing in some form or another. I have worked as a journalist for a small newspaper in Cave Creek, AZ, written marketing copy for the Phoenix Art Museum's Contemporary Forum Art and Architecture Tour, published a personal essay in The Wapsipinicon Almanac, written articles for The Woman Today magazine, created intranet content and Horizons magazine articles for Rockwell Collins, ghostwritten executive newsletters, and most recently published a story in a book, Beyond the Battle. My master's degree in Strategic Communication echoes my belief that everything hinges on writing, on communication, on storytelling.

Using that gift to serve others is my calling. I found my people when I landed at Rockwell Collins, surrounded by engineers and technical professionals who were brilliant at their work yet often struggled to explain it to anyone outside their world. During my time there I built earned value management reporting processes across twenty concurrent government contracts, wrote risk management plans for military hardware proposals, and was the person making sure the right people understood what the engineers built and why it mattered. That work showed me something I have never forgotten: the gap between what technical professionals accomplish and what the market understands about them is almost always a communication gap, not a capability gap.

When I founded Career Communication Strategies in 2011 I deliberately named it to articulate that career transitions are a strategic communication campaign. Too many people start with the resume and think that is the problem. In reality the problem is a lack of clarity about the value they bring, and a lack of language to talk about themselves to people outside their world. The professionals who come to me have spent years delivering results that their materials have never fully captured, and they need someone who can see that work clearly and translate it for the people making hiring decisions.

I hold a Certified Master Resume Writer credential, certifications in career coaching and personal branding, and serve as Director of Engineering Career Services at the University of Iowa College of Engineering. My clients have landed at Apple, NASA, IBM, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, JPL, and the U.S. Military, from Calgary to Singapore to New York.

In 2023 I was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer. I worked through treatment and have been NED, no evidence of disease, since August of that year. I tell you this because it sharpened something I already knew: life is too short to do work that does not reflect who you actually are. That is true for me and it is true for every client who comes to me knowing they are capable of more than their current situation shows. If that is you, let's talk.