I recently joined BreakGround part-time as a Growth and Community Consultant.We're a fresh startup with a small team, but I believe we've created a seriously helpful AI tool in Ordinal. We'll take any dense documents, manuals, or other information your team uses and upload them to Ordinal, then you can ask the AI questions in your natural voice and receive thorough answers with cited sources showing where the answer came from in your data. Our mission is to get it in the hands of local US governments, particularly City Planners, so they can use it to answer questions about city code and specific municipal ordinances faster, easier, and with fewer errors. As of now, I am primarily assisting with Sales & Acquisition but I'm also contributing to Marketing, Community, & Operations. Some of my main responsibilities consist of: - Identifying and implementing strategies to generate qualified leads that align with BreakGround’s ideal customer profile.- Developing and executing outreach initiatives to engage prospective clients across multiple channels.- Facilitating the growth of the sales pipeline by securing meetings and appointments with high-potential prospects.- Continuously refining growth strategies based on performance data and market insights.With all that said, if you are interested in Ordinal, don't hesitate to reach out. I'd love to set up a demo for you and hear what you think!

I co-host the podcast "On the Board" alongside Jason McDonald. For the show, we interview various folks who have successfully found jobs during the past 2 years (2023 & 2024) asking them questions about their experiences of looking for work. Our show is primarily meant for job seekers, giving them an honest look into what it's like to be a job hunter as well as advice and encouragement that they can use to better their chances of finding work.Please tune in and if you have questions or are interested in being interviewed, feel free to message me!

As a Senior Community Manager at Forem, my job transformed over time, but the one constant was always serving communities.When I first became Forem’s Senior Community Manager, I was granted the responsibility of leading and managing our Community Success Team. The business had pivoted from primarily serving the community at DEV (dev.to) to also evangelizing Forem, our community-building software. My team was tasked with nurturing our communities (DEV, CodeNewbie, Forem.dev) while also supporting new Forem communities paid for by customers and launched by open-source creators. I orchestrated our efforts, ensuring we evenly distributed our attention across these communities and community builders.For Forem, we developed documentation, set up customers' environments, led training sessions for Community Managers, grew our community of practitioners on Forem.dev, and shared product feedback on behalf of Forem creators. Meanwhile, on DEV, my department and I continued to foster a kind, helpful, inclusive community by recruiting more moderators, hosting meetups, and responding to new challenges like AI-generated content. We also collaborated with our Marketing department to run content campaigns on DEV; our two teams convened weekly for a meeting that I co-led.By 2022, our organization had grown to ~50 people. Unfortunately, the software industry was beginning to experience a downward trend and Forem was not making a profit. The decision was made to lay off half the organization, and we recalibrated to focus our efforts back on DEV. While we made great strides in growing and engaging the community, we were unable to monetize these efforts effectively. In November of 2023, again, half the organization was laid off. With a headcount of 10 people, we adapted to our new environment and began to see an upward trend in revenue. Unfortunately, it was too little, too late. In May 2024, I was let go along with most of the team.

After ~8 months of working as a Community Coordinator, I was promoted to Community Manager.My responsibilities expanded and I began working more closely with our partners while also continuing to support community members at DEV (dev.to). In addition, we hired a Content Manager whom I trained to manage the social media work I had previously helmed.During this time, we began to expand into new territories. Our community, DEV (dev.to), grew rapidly and became well-known by developers world wide. I continued to serve the community, renewing our focus on DEV’s Community Moderator Program and advocating for improved spam-fighting abilities to better scale our community with help from our most trusted members. Meanwhile, our business pivoted from only serving the community at DEV to also creating software for building communities. We worked to generalize the software behind DEV and began shaping it into a platform that other organizations could use to create similar communities – we called this project Forem and rebranded our business from DEV Community to Forem.As the Forem platform matured, we recruited early trial customers to test it. Because I had the most experience working with the platform, I was recruited to help evangelize and teach Forem to folks — often Community Managers. During this time, I would regularly meet with community builders launching their own Forems, help them learn the software, and guide them on how to serve and grow their communities. I knew the possibilities and limitations of our software and was experienced as a Community Manager, so would partner with them to launch, build, and maintain their Forems.At the start of 2021, we recruited two new folks in my department to help us better serve our flagship community, DEV (dev.to), and the fledgling Forem Community Managers. During this time, I trained up multiple Community Coordinators and began running most of my team's day-to-day which led to my promotion as a Senior Community Manager.

My first role at Forem helped ground me in the platform, tools, and processes used to serve the community at DEV (dev.to). As a small startup of ~10 employees, I juggled many responsibilities and reported directly to one of the organization’s founders and CEO, Peter. I worked in this position for ~8 months before being promoted to Community Manager.In this role, I acted as Social Media Manager, promoting our members’ posts across multiple social channels (X/Facebook/LinkedIn/etc.) using Buffer to schedule posts daily according to a content plan I helped create. As the final defense for moderation on dev.to, I reviewed all daily “abuse reports” sent in from community members and moderators. These reports include spam, plagiarism, and code of conduct violations like rude behavior. I created our canned responses and handled communication with affected members, defining what disciplinary actions should be taken for each offense and modeling a path for remediation to give offenders second chances.I managed all email inboxes and inbound communication across channels answering inquiries from community members, sponsors, DevRel and Marketing departments for different organizations, open-source contributors, and more. I used Front to manage these disparate channels, crafting canned responses to improve efficiency and make our messages more uniform. I also took advantage of Front’s built-in analytics to improve our response times.Lastly, I shaped our platform early in development by writing feature requests and reporting bugs. I’d regularly raise and advocate for community members’ requests, acknowledging them and making sure members felt seen and heard, while also being careful not to overpromise or commit to anything without consulting the team. As the primary user of our admin tools, I regularly shared opinions about how to improve the system and collaborated across departments to ensure that our tools appropriately evolved for our needs.

My range of responsibilities covers supporting and building relationships with our community contributors, managing our Zone Leader program, and working as an editorial consultant to the marketing teams of various sponsors to ensure that they produce content that fits well with our audience.

I began working at DZone as an editor, but after about six months, I moved into the role of Content and Community Manager. At the time, our company had just had a reorg, and it was a brand new position. A fellow editor and mentor, Matt Werner, also held the same title, and we were given the opportunity to carve out our own approaches to the job with the loose responsibilities of recruiting software dev-focused bloggers to join our Most Valuable Blogger (MVB) Program write for the site, enlisting dev-authors to write for our publications, managing our Zone Leader program (a team of paid remote dev writers/community leaders), and consulting with the editorial teams of various sponsors to ensure that they produce content that fits well with our audience.At first, we split the tasks 50/50, but as we went on, I gravitated more toward managing the Zone Leader program while Matt preferred recruiting authors for our publications. We decided it made the most sense for us to split those tasks up, each of us taking point on what we enjoyed doing most, but still helping one another when needed.For the bulk of this role, most of my day-to-day revolved around relationship-building. I'd scour the web for interesting dev blogs to approach and see if their writers wanted to join our MVB program. I'd regularly consult with our Zone Leaders via Slack: feeding them writing prompts and news to cover on the site, disseminating their feedback about DZone to management, getting intros from folks in the industry they knew or providing intros to folks I knew, acquiring press passes for the team to attend conferences, and more. Also, I worked to edit and repost our sponsors' articles on DZone, providing editorial feedback and consultancy on how to create quality content that fits our what our readers expect. In other words, I'd try steer them toward writing helpful dev resources that are vendor agnostic and not purely advertorial. My primary role is to voice what the community wants.

• Edited community submitted articles on a daily basis for several "Zones" (developer categories) on DZone.com; helped developer-writers to improve their writing and encouraged them to continue submitting content• Grew DZone's pool of developer-writers by reaching out to developer-bloggers and blog managers online, building relationships with them, and convincing them to join our MVB (Most Valuable Blogger) program. • Analyzed site traffic patterns on an ongoing basis through analytics tools, participated in round-table discussions with fellow editors about how to improve content on our site, and worked with writers to produce valuable, popular content based upon our findings.

I recently moved back to the US after living in Scotland for the last few years while my wife studied to become a veterinarian. Although I enjoyed being abroad, I put my career goals aside and worked various small-time jobs to keep us financially afloat during her course. Allow me to explain my current situation of unemployment… basically, I left my job as a caregiver near the end of June and traveled to Greece for a couple of weeks before returning to Scotland for my wife's graduation. Afterward we visited New Jersey, where her family lives, and near the end of July arrived back in Henderson, North Carolina, my hometown. During August, I briefly worked as a server/cashier at a local restaurant, Harvest, to earn some extra cash while she applied for jobs all over the state. After my wife accepted a job at Clayton Animal Hospital, I quit the temporary position at Harvest, and we moved to Smithfield, NC near the beginning of September. Now I'm job searching, looking into various positions in the Raleigh area. It is my goal to find a career in which I can apply my creative writing skills and/or work with like-minded individuals for an innovative company in the field of technology.

• Offered physical and emotional care to mentally disabled/challenged adults; promoted independence when possible• Accompanied residents to workshops; assisted in creative endeavours/work• Provided routine medication and occasional emergency care when necessary: administered CPR, basic first aid, and buccal midazolam treatment for victims of epileptic seizure• Prepared/cooked meals for residents; maintained group home appearance/cleanliness Working with staff from around the world at Garvald West Linton, I greatly enjoyed my experience as a caregiver for mentally disabled adults in such an extremely unique environment. Initially, I was positioned in the one-hundred-seventy-year-old Rowan House, where I aided residents in their day-to-day lives, providing physical care and company. Gradually, I began to work overtime regularly in a few of the other houses (Linden and Willow) which were short on staff, and assisted in activities such as woodworking, baking, crafting, weaving, and groundskeeping. And though I administered daily medication to those in need, the atmosphere of the place was far from clinical. I worked with creative individuals of various ethnicities and backgrounds to provide a warm, loving, fun environment for those less fortunate than myself. My time there was rewarding and humbling, teaching me the value of hard work and offering me a surprising view into a culture I never dreamed of experiencing. I left on good terms and greatly miss the staff and residents of Garvald. If desired, I can surely put potential employers in contact with my house managers, Andrea Satzinger and Catriona Cochrane, or the head manager of Garvald West Linton, Robert Crichton.

• Managed/trained staff and worked flexibly to optimize efficiency• Maintained restaurant appearance and high level of cleanliness; worked the cash register; prepared/cooked food; opened/closed the shop• Spoke with and served customers in a friendly mannerAfter arriving in the UK, I first started work at this busy breakfast/lunch restaurant. I began as a server, but after a year was working as the assistant manager. My wide range of responsibilities included cooking/prepping food, training new employees, manning the register, making coffees, serving customers, doing dishes, and opening/closing the restaurant. It was a fast-paced atmosphere involving lots of multi-tasking, teamwork, and constant customer interaction, which I really enjoyed. My initial difficulty with the Scottish accent soon dissipated as I regularly chatted and joked around with the local patrons of The Coffee Spot, which was nestled in the heart of the Scottish countryside. I made friends with nearly everyone in the small village of Biggar and greatly enjoyed my status as the token American. Even though I enjoyed the job for some time, I left in the end because I felt unchallenged and didn't see any more opportunity to grow. My wage remained consistently low while my responsibilities, work ethic, and customer/coworker relations excelled, so I knew it was time for a change. I left on good terms with my boss, Maureen Russell, and continued to visit The Coffee Spot and Biggar regularly until I moved away from Scotland.

• Greeted customers and helped them to locate books or other items• Kept record of stock sold and made note of items that needed to be replaced; ordered books when necessary• Worked the cash register, photocopier, credit card machine, computer, and phone/answering machine; opened/closed the shop Although I really enjoyed this job, it was only a temporary/occasional position. While my boss, a Wagner (the composer) historian, was away attending classical music concerts outside of the UK, I was allowed to keep the shop for him. This meant managing the bookstore for a week to two weeks at a time. As much as I enjoyed this opportunity, my work there was too infrequent and proved to be a hazard for scheduling with my other job, so I made the decision to quit. I'm still in touch with the owner, Derek Watson, and have asked him for recommendations in the past.