I’m a hands-on Creative Director, Art Director, Illustrator and Maker with over twenty years of professional experience and a track record for creating thumb-stopping social creative and developing high-performing teams. So yes… I’ve been around the block a few times; and starting my career post-grad in a small town and exhausting all the creative roles there meant that I learned a lot—but the job titles I had never matched what I did. I led all Creative for Dippin’ Dots, Inc. for over five years—and helped develop “Minion Madness Cookie Dough” as a co-branded tie-in with Illumination Entertainment when the first “Despicable Me” came out—but my title there was only ever “Designer.” I’ve driven initiatives for scalable digital creative solutions in addition to leading custom social content and video productions that resulted in double-digit sales increases. My career began in print design and gave me a strong grounding in production specs and “doing work right the first time” to avoid costly reprints. I’ve championed the power of social and new media; leading the launch of Facebook for Dippin’ Dots, Inc. (2007) and TikTok for Arby’s (2018) and The Home Depot (2022). I empower and challenge my teams to think strategically—not just creatively—as we work to elevate the brands we touch and make content that resonates with our audiences. I enjoy passing along what I’ve learned and teach new shooting, editing and software techniques to my teams on a regular basis to help everyone develop new skills. I’ve worked freelance, long-term contract, in-house and agency-side as a single contributor on a larger Marketing team as well as a Creative team leader and mentor—hence the number of titles that don’t accurately reflect the job I was hired to do. I identify as a member of the LGBTQ+ community and proudly bring my whole self to every role. I’ve won awards for my work, including a Cannes Silver Lion and a Shorty Award for Art Direction; but the one that means the most to me is the HOW Design award for the wedding invitations I created for my husband and me in 2014.

Press

Our team's primary objective for most of the time I worked on the Arby's social account was Brand Affinity... and the number of writeups we got attest to the fact that our content hit a sweet spot for a lot of people. We were invited to multiple events to speak on behalf of the brand, and I was invited to several conventions to speak and do live crafting demos.

For "Arby's Missing Menu" TikTok Influencer Campaign

Rolling Stone  |  Mashed  |  Nation's Restaurant News  |  TikTok's Newsroom

For the Hardy Daytona from "Final Fantasy 7: Remake"

GameSpot | Game Rant
FF7-Remake_GameRant

GameSpot

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Launch Inspires Tributes From The Doom Slayer, Arby's

"An awesome piece of fan art and some amazing cardboard papercraft are two of the ways companies are tipping a hat to FF7."

Game Rant

"...what's really crazy about these replicas isn't just the fact that they're life-like and that a fast-food chain created them, but the fact that they're made out of nothing but sandwich boxes. The same sandwich boxes that barely stretch over a foot in length. It must have taken hundreds of these things to pull something like this off.

The amount of attention that went into each model's design is staggering. The Hardy-Daytona model made excellent use of stenciling and cut-outs to capture most, if not all, of the details of Cloud's bike. Arby's even used foil to create the illusion of a honed-edge for the Buster Sword."

For General Nerdiness / Love for the Arby's Content

Esquire  |  Twiends  |  PRNewswire  |  Cracked  |  Viewster  |  FoodBeast  |  Asian Crush  |  Goboiano  |  Bored Panda  |  Bento Byte  |  Campaign Live  |  A-List Daily  |  Anime News Network  |  Bleeding Cool  |  Intelligent Design Collective (iDC)  |  PRNews  | The Social Shake-Up Show  |  Dorkly  |  Sweety High  |  Kotaku  |  Anime News Network  |  Find Your Inner Geek  |  The Chive
Social-Media_Foodbeast

FoodBeast

"Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of creativity in the fast food space. But Arby’s just took it to another level."

PRNewswire

"Arby's... has revamped its brand and advertising strategy over the last several years, which has proven to be effective. ... the brand has since revamped its social media presence to not take itself too seriously while also engaging with niche audiences such as the video game community who responds to its gaming references, giving its fans more reason to share and engage with their content."

Kotaku

Why Arby's Twitter Is All Over Gaming Right Now

"While gamers might not have been thinking about Arby’s, it’s obvious from the range of games subject to the company’s social creative efforts that the small team working on them has definitely been thinking about games."

For #MakeMySandwich

Infosurhoy  |  NowThis  |  Independent.ie  |  Bailiwick Express (UK)  |  Naomi the Boss  |  Express and Star  |  Thrillist  |  EventHubs  |  Ekla (India)  |  Fans of David  |  MMORPG.com  |  Apocalypse
Thrillist_MakeMySandwich

Thrillist

"Late last week, the chain hired an artist to create portraits made of sandwich fixin's. People tweeted to Arby's with the hashtag #MakeMySandwich, and they made a sandwich in the shape of that person's face. It wasn't just some vague resemblance, either. The sandwiches were incredible likenesses of people and characters. (Even if the creation wasn't the most delicious sandwich in the world.)"

For DCI Championships 2018

Reddit

For Anime Expo 2018 / Nightmare

Kotaku  |  Adweek  |  GameRevolution  |  EventHubs  |  Reddit  |  Destructoid
Nightmare_Adweek

Adweek

"Arby’s has built a strong reputation among some of the nerdier niches of the internet thanks to its meticulously well crafted pieces of art, made entirely from packaging and food, that anchor both the chain’s Instagram and Twitter accounts."

Kotaku

"The company—which specialises in fast food and nerd jokes on Twitter—worked with cosplay costume and props builder Volpin Props to construct a Nightmare statue from Soulcalibur that stood a very impressive 7’8”."

For E3 / Jump Force

Reddit

For Saucy_AF

The Verge  |  Fast Company  |  Daily Mail UK  |  Adweek  |  AdAge/Creativity Online
Saucy_AF_AdAge

AdAge

"This week, Arby's began offering its saucily-named font--Saucy_AF--for download. The AF, the fast-feeder says, stands for "Arby's Font," but you can go ahead and interpret it however you'd like."

Fast Company

"...Saucy_AF is clearly a joke, but also simultaneously a very real thing, making it the perfect millennial marketing stunt."

For Brandi Chastain's Hall of Fame Portrait

TMZ

For SONY PlayStation's God of War Game Release

GameInformer

For Ranma 1/2

Crunchyroll

For Anime Expo 2017

Anime News Network

For Nintendo's Switch Announcement

Polygon

For "Geek the Halls" Facebook Live

Twinfinite

Appearances & Live Events

July 4-7, 2019
March 16, 2019
September 15-16, 2018
August 2-5, 2018
June 29, 2018

Wanna find me elsewhere?

You'll get bored quickly... it's a lot of photos of my adorable husband, our kids and our rescue dog, Porter.