Develop and oversee communications strategy for state department that includes State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), Division of Fire Safety, Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Program, Missouri State Highway Patrol, Division of Alcohol & Tobacco Control, and law enforcement and victim assistance grant programs. Serve as spokesman on disaster response, crisis communications, and controversial issues. Website development, social media, video production, speechwriting, news releases, newsletters, media interviews at highest levels. Create unique content for websites and video and forge new partnerships with stakeholders.• Following devastating 2011 EF-5 Joplin tornado, led SEMA’s communications efforts in Joplin, including sensitive issues such as accounting for hundreds of people reported missing in national media. • Created Missouri StormAware website, unique site that uses videos to demonstrate how to prepare and respond to severe weather. • Designed, wrote and edited After the Storm, Missouri Governor’s report on rebuilding and restoration following Joplin tornado. • Plan and coordinate media events, including with Missouri governor and U.S. Cabinet secretaries.• Oversee state communications for 11 major disaster declarations, including Joplin tornado, severe storms, flooding, winter storms.• Served as communications director on international trade missions to Asia, Europe, Middle East, Central America, Canada and Cuba. • Extensive experience in communications related to law enforcement, defense, veteran affairs, economic development, international trade, education, corrections, and other key public policy areas.• Extensive training and exercise experience with local and federal partners, including National Level Exercise 2011 (catastrophic earthquake) and regular nuclear power plant exercises.• As liaison on media open records law requests, facilitate and coordinate department responses on wide range of issues.

Generalist who had to be a quick study to cover everything from crime and elections to business and human interest features. Researched and reported complex and diverse local and national news stories, ranging from a presidential convention to a U.S. Air Force medical evacuation mission in and out of Iraq's Sunni Triangle.

Learned art of visual story-telling, melding words, video and natural sound to effectively communicate messages. Traveled in Midwest and Puerto Rico to report and produce documentary on the movement of U.S. manufacturing jobs.

Learned importance on focusing on real people as reported extensively on labor issues and politics at a time of contraction in the U.S. auto industry in a town heavily dependent on the auto industry. Covered presidential campaigns in Ohio and Michigan. Extensive contacts with labor and business leaders.

Broke into television news in the picturesque Southern city known for Spanish moss and historic squares. Covered military issues in a region dependent on Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield and crime, including one of the murder trials that led to the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.