I started my career as a reporter in Dexter, Mich., winning the newspaper's first state journalism award in 1998. I was promoted as the first woman editor of The Chelsea Standard/Dexter Leader in 2000, winning two Newspaper-of-the-Year awards from the MPA, and inviting our audience to contribute and interact with us through Coffee with the Editor and by building a blogger network.In 2006, I was named editor at The Saline Reporter/Milan News-Leader, and took on the challenge of implementing changes that maximized our reach across platforms. Three years later, I became managing editor of eight weeklies in the region, where we practiced community-focused listening and reporting.Digital First Media recognized my passion for audience engagement and appointed me to its ideaLab to innovate with storytelling tools and further my work in community engagement. Through this role, I developed a respect for social-first and audience-driven storytelling, and taught my staff how to enrich and elevate our journalism, and engage readers. We used social media and polls for crowdsourcing, produced live journalism using social media, and created audiocasts. We built interactive timelines, maps and graphics and used DocumentCloud for deeper dives.In April 2012, DFM OK'd my proposal to launch a community media lab to train contributors and facilitate news-sharing partnerships. In 2013, it became my job, along with directing newsroom training and community engagement efforts in all DFM Michigan newsrooms.In 2014, I moved to California for a job as content editor at the Record Searchlight, part of Gannett/USA TODAY Network, launching the 530 Media Project to teach digital literacy. It was written about by E&P.In 2016, I was promoted to consumer experience director at Ventura County Star, where I launched a newsletter, history podcast and local Storytellers Project. I also produced the spelling bee, Star Scholars and Readers Choice Awards.In 2018, I was named to Gannett's Emerging Leaders program and in 2019 promoted as first national manager of the Storytellers Project, part of Gannett. I managed a national storytelling series, working with newsrooms across the country to lift up stories that created community connection.In 2022, I left journalism to pursue my passion for community engagement as community outreach and education manager at the Camarillo Health Care District. In May 2023, I graduated from the Ventura County Leadership Academy. In August 2023, the "Adventures in Virtual Reality" program I co-created won Innovative Program of the Year from CSDA.