It's hard to fit nearly 10 amazing years (and counting) into one quick summary, but here are some things I'm proud of:• I helped lead a group of state, education, and business leaders to create a specific and ambitious vision for improving teacher compensation.• My team and I launched a podcast to help break down some of the biggest issues facing Utah's Future (it's called "Your Utah, Your Future"). I also get to host the show!• I wrote an ad campaign that has helped shape public opinion around education issues. I also managed the media buy for that campaign over several years on a shoestring budget.• I started a collaborative community project to help parents foster healthy brain development in their kids. I hired an amazing team to run that project, and it has grown to include 100 partners across Utah and reach 20,000+ families each year. I also played a key role in securing more than $1.4 million in funding for that project.• I oversaw media relations, paid outreach, and social media strategy on a dozen major projects. • I conducted first-of-its-kind research to identify the barriers that prevent high school students from pursuing education after high school.• I conducted research to figure out how to motivate more college students to become teachers.• I led an effort to get more than 52,000 Utahns to take a survey about the future of the state.• I had the privilege to grow a 1-person team to a 6-person department and oversee amazing education and communications teams through visioning projects, in-person and virtual events, a website redesign, video and radio scripts, countless document designs and talking points, and so much more!

Just a year after graduating, two of my former professors reached out to see if I wanted to teach a class. I said yes and haven’t looked back. I’ve taught courses about MEDIA RELATIONS, STRATEGIC WRITING for PR and ADVERTISING, and even a little GRAPHIC DESIGN. For the last two years, I've been teaching aCOMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH course. I help my students learn the ins and outs of focus groups, surveys, simple descriptive statistics, and how to effectively communicate research findings. My students have conducted messaging and communications research on issues like air quality, earthquake preparedness, climate change, population growth, diversity and inclusion and more.

I had the immense privilege to staff the education policy team for the Cox Transition Team. Our team developed a set of policy recommendations and strategies to help the new administration implement the governor's education priorities. I oversaw the logistics and administrative work, reported regularly to the heads of the transition team, and, most importantly, drafted our team's final recommendations. Nearly all of our recommendations ended up in the governor's "One Utah Roadmap."(And as a bonus, the transition team adopted my document design as the template for all the policy teams' recommendations.)

Working at The Richards Group was an amazing experience. I got to learn from some of the best advertisers and PR folks in the biz, and I even sat next to the creative director for the Ram Trucks account(!). I worked on media relations for the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle campaign (#redkettlereason), and I pitched Texas mommy bloggers on Chuck E Cheese.

As an intern, I worked on accounts for a variety of clients including TIME LIFE Books and PBS, as well as some local organizations. I wrote and distributed targeted pitches, created media lists using Vocus, tracked media coverage and completed a number of other tasks for GMI clients. Overall, I helped GMI secure media coverage for its clients in a number of outlets including About.com, book review sites and radio outlets.

BYU's Center for the Study of Europe is a National Resource Center that aims to encourage European scholarship and involvement among students, faculty, K-12 teachers and students, and the community. The public relations specialist manages branding, event promotion, and social networking, as well as various outreach activities and events.

Managed account for Deseret Book Led team of 52 writers to produce 180+ database entries for client website.Developed detailed progress-tracking procedures and wrote regular reports for client.

The Writing Fellows Program is a peer tutoring, discipline-based program which encourages and supports the development of mature student writing across the disciplines and the curriculum. As trained and skilled undergraduate tutors, the Writing Fellows work with faculty and their students on two class-specific writing assignments. By reading, commenting and explicitly focusing on long-term writing development, Writing Fellows contribute to the development of careful student thinking and writing and, as a result, support the aims of an undergraduate education at BYU.