As Chief Network Officer, I'm part of the senior leadership for a rapidly growing organization dedicated to improving the American journalism community. My specific charge includes developing ways to strengthen collaboration among INN’s network of nonprofit newsrooms, as well as developing partnerships and services that help them meet their missions and increase the impact of their journalism. I also lead the McCormick Foundation-funded Amplify Project among Midwest newsrooms, piloting new models for news sharing and distribution. I'm also interested in identifying ways local and regional news organizations can work together and with national organizations to extend the impact of their journalism.

Working closely with INN's CEO, I've been retained to work on various product extension and business development opportunities for the fast-growing Institute for Nonprofit News. For the next few months, I'm working to identify unmet needs of members and identify the best opportunities for INN to address them.

Helping provide leadership and guidance to a talented team of journalists and professionals helping to run one of the best nonprofit news organizations in the region, by serving on the organization's board of directors.

Oversaw the strategic direction of an international news site, including identifying content priorities, developing social media plans and creating staffing models to achieve company goals while not exceeding available resources.Coordinated with resource development department to ensure site supported goals around boosting individual fundraising.Led efforts to develop strategic partnerships and marketing plans that would support content and audience goals.Helped develop proposals for and then implement key projects receiving more than $5M in grant funding from some of the largest foundation funders in the US.Recruited, hired and trained a performance-driven team of 15 people (as well as a number of contractors and freelancers) as a servant leader with a focus on helping each person achieve maximum performance.Edited stories and multimedia for accuracy, completeness, style and structure.Partnered with other company leaders to manage through a time of great organizational change.Coordinated information sharing and assisted with staff evaluation in preparation for a strategic merger.

Championed new storytelling techniques within daily news environment.Developed systems to support a distributed workforce of staff, contractors and freelancers.Directly managed a team of five people focused on key editorial priorities including: immigration, gender equity, global security/migration and social media.Trained wider staff on new opportunities with technology.Developed effective social media strategy that saw on-platform engagement and click-through rates well in excess of industry averages.Partnered with senior leadership to develop grant proposals in support of key editorial priorities and key staffing needs.Commissioned and edited stories on global news for a broad, English-speaking audience.

Owned digital content strategy and creation.Played a key role in overseeing a total technical transformation of digital content management system.Optimized content conceived for radio for consumption on digital platforms, with an eye toward social and search.Sourced, recruited and hired organization's first social media manager.Championed social strategy and created organization's first editorial social media strategy, with a focus on engagement.Collaborated across the organization to define the role of digital media in a complex, traditional media company.

Provided strategic leadership to the largest group of professional journalists in the state of Minnesota.Supported and lobbied for open government, public transparency, freedom of the press and ethics in journalism.Led evaluation of organizational budget and successfully recommended the board adopt price increases across its major programs to ensure the organization remained on a sound financial footing.Successfully boosted membership through a program of individual conversations and mass communication.

Led the transformation of a talented team of journalists into a group of digital reporters focused on building and fostering topic-driven, community news sites. Helped identify target topics and worked with colleagues from sales, marketing and technology to build a business case and technology stack that would support out efforts.Trained staff across the company on digital strategy and digital storytelling.Developed cross-divisional teams to advance new projects and build audience.

Was part of the leadership team for all news-gathering efforts for the Lawrence Journal-World, 6News Lawrence and LJWorld.com.Wrote and edited breaking news stories, push alerts and social media posts for immediate publication on a large, regional news site.Developed strategic plans to grow audience and audience engagement with digital news. Key insight was that we had saturated our market, but needed to boost the number of times each individual visited our site — successfully altered publishing schedule to encourage same-day repeat visitors.

Reported and produced 1-2 stories per day for print, TV and online, with a primary focus on higher education in the state of Kansas.Developed relationships with sources at varying levels, including students, faculty, campus leadership, state higher education leaders and politicians.Covered breaking news as it developed, with special attention to filing immediately for a website driven by breaking news.

Researched, reported and wrote breaking news stories, including covering the disappearance, abduction and death of a young girl that was a major national news story for a week.Developed enterprise stories of interest to a broad, metropolitan audience.Developed relationships with key sources around the coverage area.

Served in varying roles, including spending a year as editor-in-chief and leader of a staff of nearly 100 journalists working to produce a daily newspaper catering to an audience of students.Led a technological modernization after years of under-investment.Developed strategic coverage plans for major news events including elections and the anniversary of a deadly fire.Recruited and hired talented staff of editors, reporters, photographers and graphic designers.Edited stories for completeness, accuracy and interest to our target audience.Reported and wrote stories that broke news or elucidated important topics.

Covered KU football and basketball for a daily student newspaper. Wrote game stories, features and investigative reports on various KU sports programs.

Wrote headlines, designed and laid out pages, edited copy for clarity, content and style.

Wrote, researched and reported business-related stories for a weekly business newspaper covering the Austin, Texas, business community.