MY BIO

Who the heck do I think I am?

For me, it’s all about stories. As soon as I could sound out a word, my nose was in a book. To this day, my nightstand runneth over with a pile of to-be-read novels. I love words and how they can be manipulated to be funny and clever or twisted to be devastating and cruel. The only thing I do more than read, is write. (Oh, and talk, I talk quite a bit.)

I grew up a theatre nerd in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Never one to do things halfway, I not only committed to being a drama major, but also auditioned for several conservatory programs in acting, finally being accepted at The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago. My time acting and performing is key to who I am as a writer. After all, what is theatre but physicalized storytelling? It’s always my hope that I bring the same depth of feeling to the words that I type as I do the words I have spoken onstage.

I spent almost 20 years after college in Los Angeles, multitasking. While I was performing and directing with theatre companies all over the city, I was a retail makeup artist for several different cosmetic brands. When I wasn’t working as a makeup artist for weddings and music videos, I was writing plays. When I wasn’t entering novel-writing contests, I was learning about wine. In 2010, I came back to hospitality and climbed through the ranks to work at award-winning restaurants with illustrious management teams like the folks at chi Spacca and Sotto. As a General Manager, being thoughtful, clear, and concise with guests and more importantly, with your teams both on the floor and back of house, can be the difference between a great service and a disastrous night.

I get to write about hospitality quite a bit these days and you can hear my boots-on-the-ground experience, and my knack for clarity and precision in my writing style. Working in restaurants and bars is more than understanding food and booze, it’s about all the different people it takes to make it happen, and it’s this dynamic, diverse, and everchanging group and their stories that inspire me to write words that are inclusive and useful to a wide swath of audience, even when I’m creating content outside of the service industry.

Returning to Chicago a few years ago, I created a position with Dineamic Hospitality that utilized my ability to learn pretty much whatever you put in front of me (no, not biology and chemistry.) I was there to implement new tech systems and translate corporate needs from the Operations, Human Resources and Finance departments to the GMs at each venue. Learning is my secret super-power. I’ve never met a piece of software I couldn’t figure out eventually and I even ended up working for a time in the accounting department at Dineamic (while also training folks about the production printer.) The best part of my job was writing training material and parts of the employee handbook. As the pandemic took hold, it only made sense to translate all of these far-flung skill sets into a copywriting career, and for the last year and a half I have been honored to work with many marketing and event agencies and brands like Beam Suntory to tell their stories.

Let me tell your story! I want to translate your love and enthusiasm for what you do to the page. Great energy is infectious, and my job is to show the world how you feel about the product or service you have built. Let’s hang out and see if I can lend a hand.

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