I am the communications guru for Ottawa County's Department of Strategic Impact. What does that mean, you might ask? Whether we're talking groundwater, farmland preservation, or brownfield redevelopment, the Department of Strategic Impact's work represents a sort of 'guiding framework' for major initiatives in the County. I educate the public, promote, and garner support for department initiatives through clear and engaging outreach, including - but not limited to - press releases, informational reports, social media posts, photography, graphic design, website content management, multimedia creation and support, and content editing for punctuation, grammar, and accuracy.

As Design Hub Director, I do the following:• Manage layout for three daily newspapers• Assign work for two assistant designers and myself• Design graphics and maps• Edit photos • Coordinate with editors and writers both in-house and remotely• Edit content with an emphasis on quality control• Maintain and update templates for daily products and a weekly tabloid publication• Streamline design styles• Draft and update training guides, job descriptions and best practice sheets for designers and editors• Lay out eight-12 pages per dayPublications I manage:• The Holland Sentinel• GO entertainment• Ionia Sentinel-Standard• Cheboygan Daily Tribune

As a presentation editor, I assisted in overseeing design, editing and troubleshooting a number of daily and weekly publications, including, but not limited to:Dailies• Traverse City Record-Eagle (Michigan)• Effingham Daily News (Illinois)• Mount Vernon Register-News (Illinois)• The Mankato Free Press (Minnesota)• The Daily Iowegian (Iowa)• Ottumwa Courier (Iowa)• Oskaloosa Herald (Iowa)• Clinton Herald (Iowa)One biweekly: • Shelbyville Daily Union (Illinois)And several weeklies:• Knoxville Journal-Express (Iowa)• Pella Chronicle (Iowa)• McLeansboro Times-Leader (Illinois)

My duties included designing six-12 pages for up to six publications a day; streamlining design styles for each publication; choosing state, nation and world news for print; editing and fact-checking news stories; processing news releases; collaborating on and designing graphics, including charts and locator maps; photo editing; posting stories to the Web, organizing and assigning tabloid and special supplement publications to co-workers; and troubleshooting on deadline every step of the way.

My duties included pagination, editing, choosing state, nation and world news for print, and designing graphics.