I joined the Vendor Management Team at PSI in May 2014. In my role, I provide support, strategy, advocacy, and customer service to over 20 of the top companies in the board games, educational toys, and designer toy industries. While there is no typical day, common tasks associated with my interactions with my vendor partners include: business strategy, issues resolution, purchase order tracking, reporting & analysis, data integrity, and representation in sales meetings for PSI's retail partners.I also attend trade shows and off-site business meetings to help represent my vendors, as well as seek out new opportunities.

NOTE: Currently accepting new writing opportunities I've been writing as a freelancer for a variety of outlets since 1998. This opportunity has allowed me to interview musicians, media personalities, and authors for local, regional, and national publications. Whether it's a blog or fanzine with dedicated readership or a national magazine with a broader audience, I have the ability, and experience, to focus my writing to fit each outlet's needs. I'm also well-versed in writing ebooks, infographics, downloadable content, print copy, and web copy for b2b organizations.

At The Whole Brain Group, I worked as a Digital Marketing Strategist for several prominent B2B clients. With these clients, I worked on developing monthly, quarterly, and annual inbound and content marketing strategies that included the creation of content offers, blogging, web copy, e-mail marketing, and social media marketing. Because I was part of a small team, I was able to be agile and change as the situation requires. This also allowed me to wear multiple hats including Account Manager, Content Specialist, Project Manager, QA, Community Manager, and Market Response Representative.

While working for Ideation, I was responsible for developing and implementing a social media strategy to align with company goals and initiatives, which included the corporate office and two independent gift shops. I was able to increase their Facebook followers by over 100% in less than six months. I also worked on compelling store marketing initiatives and press releases to increase engagement and online presence.Aside from my role as social media community manager, I also served as a consultant and adviser for all Internet marketing and social media related items for Ideation and its members including one-on-one support sessions, account set ups, marketing, usage brainstorming, and troubleshooting. This required me to interact with corporate employees, C-Level Executives, and independent store owners. To help teach the store owners about the benefits of social media, I also took it upon myself to write a bi-weekly social media newsletter (sent to roughly 250 people) tailored to demystify social media and how to use it to benefit independent retailers, business, sales, and exposure in the marketplace. Ultimately, I was the key point of contact for all Internet and digital marketing questions, which meant I was always researching and learning about best practices and new ways to use social media to benefit business.Towards the end of my time at Ideation, I also took on the sales and account management of a proprietary store loyalty rewards program solution.

In March 2011, I was promoted to the Genre Fiction Buying team, specifically responsible for Horror, Westerns, and Role Playing Games. As the Associate Buyer, I was responsible for all assortment, forecasting, inventory, and marketing decisions for over 1500 SKUs with over $5.6 million in annual sales. I was even able to increase sales over the previous year, which is significant because of the company's impending liquidation.The buying position also gave me additional experience with customer service, terms negotiation, and vendor relations. In terms of working with vendor partners and authors, we were able to create successful marketing campaigns for their titles and increase marketshare as result.

While working with the Genre Fiction Team at Borders as a Replenishment Analyst and Associate Buyer, I was given the opportunity to serve as the company's science-fiction/geek culture blog moderator and community manager. Not only did I create original content for the blog, I was able to increase page views and twitter followers by over 50% in one year.One of the things I enjoyed the most about this opportunity was working with editors, publicists, and authors to secure top-tier authors as guest bloggers on Babel Clash. Some of the big names who participated include: Laurell K. Hamilton, Jim Butcher, Patrick Rothfuss, Heather Brewer, Rachel Caine, Kim Harrison, Holly Black, and Scott Westerfeld.

I was able to join the extremely high profile genre fiction team due to training I did on my own time as a Marketing Specialist. As one of the genre fiction Replenishment Analysts, I was responsible for managing weekly title inventory levels, as well as creating replenishment and ordering strategies, for 750 top selling backlist SKUs with over $38 million in annual sales for six categories. I developed my ordering and replenishment strategy by analyzing historical title performance data, current sales trends, optimizing stock offers, and following a defined budget.Again, because I was always looking forward at Borders, I used my off time working with three of the genre buyers to learn how to build item forecasts for Mystery titles with buys between 5 and 10K. I was also able to put my experience towards building the Fall 2010 financial plan for the Westerns category, taking over all buying responsibilities for the RPG category, and being chosen as a mentor and trainer for new Replenishment Analysts.

After working as a Vendor Liaison for two years, I was promoted to the adult trade book merchandising department. The previous relationships I developed with the publishing community as a VL benefited me greatly in this role because I was now in a position that required me to negotiate in-store placement and marketing co-op expenses with them.Once placement was agreed upon between marketing, the publisher, and the buyer, I was in charge of making sure all placement information was accurately communicated to store operations for store communication and to the buying team so they could make sure the promoted books were brought in to the stores in promotable quantities. Part of my job also allowed me to build strategic partnerships with other departments within Borders for cross-merchandised promotional displays, and recommend titles to promote and step out on directly to the buying staff.Working with the buyers helped me decide to pursue the buying career path, so in order to change careers, I worked with my colleagues who worked in the department I wanted to join and trained with them to give myself a better opportunity for success when I made the jump from marketing to book buying.

As a Vendor Liaison at Borders, I worked with multiple publishers, distributors, and wholesalers as a main point of contact. Not only was I responsible for excellent customer service, I was responsible for all related data integrity and facilitating the completion of distribution changes and company mergers within the Borders mainframe systems in a timely basis so as not to interact the flow of business. This position had a heavy analytical slant as well. I had to run reports, research future purchasing plans, and ultimately determine if distribution changes, merges, and return center holds could be completed in our favor.

While in college, I worked for the Ann Arbor Kohl's store. Not only did I help unload the first truck of fixtures and merchandise before the store opened to the public, I eventually worked in every department of the store. Throughout this time, I was made a department supervisor of four different departments within the store and focused on customer service, best practices, credit solicitation, and staff training.