Leading the effort to build fantastic user-centered documentation at Instabase.

Managed a team of eight technical writers, including hiring new writers, conducting performance reviews, establishing team goals, balancing team efforts to match business needs, and managing budget. Maintained team cohesion during pandemic transition to full-time remote model.Balance writing workload and priorities across product teams.Coordinate technical writing engagements with product and project managers, UX, and engineers.Develop our writers in their career paths, encouraging their growth, independence, and ownership of their work.Work with the team to collaboratively reprioritize our work and introduce new work processes that help us spend more time writing in-depth customer use case documentation.

Technical publications lead for our Platform product working group, representing the documentation team in that group, tracking incoming work and communicating documentation needs across writers and teams. Help onboard and train new team members on our documentation style and procedures.Work with developers on multiple teams to smooth out our release processes and to improve the information developers provide to writers.Projects included writing documentation for new features integrated across our products and revising and migrating existing documentation to the DITA standard.

Wrote and edited user-facing and internal technical documentation. Included investigating workflows and user needs, interviewing subject matter experts, and working closely with engineering, marketing, UX, and customer success teams.

Documented internal workflows, wrote user facing documentation (readmes, release notes), edited existing documentation, created Confluence templates and pages. Used Markdown for documentation, Git for version control, JIRA for issue and project tracking.

Providing freelance services, including copy editing, proofreading, copy writing, and individual writing coaching.

Taught upper and lower division college composition courses (WR 121, WR 323): focused on structure, usage, rhetoric, and critical thinking skills; developed syllabi and lesson plans; evaluated student writing; worked one-on-one with writing students in the Portland State University Writing Center.

Created Work Instructions, Simplified English Guidelines, Editing Checklist, and Style Guide.

Proofread, fact-checked, and edited new books, reprints, and marketing materials; wrote marketing, catalog, and book flap copy; edited an annual line of 25+ calendars; negotiated photographer and author contracts; negotiated domestic and foreign rights, licensing, and permissions; initiated and supervised an editorial internship program.

Provided editorial support duties for a five-person editorial department; screened submissions and proposals; proofread and fact-checked manuscripts; served as initial contact for all authors and photographers; assisted in rights and permissions requests; handled Library of Congress, Cataloging-in-Publication, and copyright issues; compiled inventory and sales data for book reprints; reviewed royalty payments and scheduled advance payments to authors; established several new electronic procedures to streamline editorial processes.

Covered high school and community sports events for the Beaverton Valley Times, Tigard Times, and Tualatin Times. Photographed sports events, interviewed players and families, wrote sports stories and features.

Covered education issues, school board, high school and community sports events; photographed, wrote, and edited stories and features, designed weekly sports page.