Biography
I was in kindergarten when I received my first journal as a Christmas gift – a white book flaunting a watercolor painting of bears at a fancy tea party. I took the journal, my new set of colored pencils and a matching tin pencil box and sat right down to work. Though I punctuated my sentences with a period after every word, I began writing about everything I saw – my cousins opening their Christmas presents, how many teeth I’d lost, what it was like to eat in the cafeteria for the first time.
Since that day more than 20 years ago, I’ve never stopped writing. In high school, I joined the newspaper staff and ate up every creative writing project, taking each assignment and reworking it to find a new angle and make it my own.
In college, I earned my degree in journalism with an English minor to cover my literary bases. I began as a writer for a student magazine and worked my way up to being the editor-in-chief by my junior year. At the same time, I interned for Portico magazine, a high-end lifestyle publication in Birmingham, Alabama, where I became enamored with the world of magazines – and editing them.
In college, I took every journalistic opportunity I could get my hands on, resolving to become a professional magazine editor after school. Graduating early, I moved to Nashville and took a six-month job as a legislative researcher for the Tennessee General Assembly, which lacked in the creative realm but taught me how to research and to be meticulously accurate.
Before the legislative session was through, I put my researching skills to work and found an entrepreneur in Nashville with the dream of launching a magazine. He wanted to tell the stories of musicians and self-starters who had set their eyes on a goal and made it happen. He needed an editor, so I picked up a nanny job on the side and stepped up as the only editor of Fringe magazine.
We interviewed emerging artists, worked out of coffee shops and our basements, brought on a designer and tasted the dirt and the joy that comes with cutting your teeth in a grassroots endeavor. We put out 10 issues of the magazine before merging with Brite Revolution, a national music discovery website in need of solid editorial content.
With the new switch, we changed our name to Brite and grew quickly and exponentially. As editor-in-chief of the magazine, I oversaw features on nationally acclaimed artists like David Gray, Joss Stone, Jewel, Blake Shelton and The Civil Wars. I did all the managing, assigning and editing for every editorial piece of our website and our print publication. I managed about 40 freelance writers, while doing a good portion of the writing on my own and balancing daily Web deadlines and bi-monthly print deadlines.
My time as an editor has taught me how to balance creativity, research and deadlines. Now, I want to broaden my reach beyond music writing and editing and come alongside organizations and individuals to help people find their voice and communicate as effectively as possible. To me, the best part of editing is helping people deliver the exact message they want to communicate.
I still keep a journal, though it’s admittedly not as saccharinely adorable as the one I kept when I was five. I still take in life as I see it and delight in using words to capture snapshots of life, ideas or messages. No matter how technology changes or how digital our means of communication become, people will always want good content. And as for me, I will always want to help them deliver it.
Since that day more than 20 years ago, I’ve never stopped writing. In high school, I joined the newspaper staff and ate up every creative writing project, taking each assignment and reworking it to find a new angle and make it my own.
In college, I earned my degree in journalism with an English minor to cover my literary bases. I began as a writer for a student magazine and worked my way up to being the editor-in-chief by my junior year. At the same time, I interned for Portico magazine, a high-end lifestyle publication in Birmingham, Alabama, where I became enamored with the world of magazines – and editing them.
In college, I took every journalistic opportunity I could get my hands on, resolving to become a professional magazine editor after school. Graduating early, I moved to Nashville and took a six-month job as a legislative researcher for the Tennessee General Assembly, which lacked in the creative realm but taught me how to research and to be meticulously accurate.
Before the legislative session was through, I put my researching skills to work and found an entrepreneur in Nashville with the dream of launching a magazine. He wanted to tell the stories of musicians and self-starters who had set their eyes on a goal and made it happen. He needed an editor, so I picked up a nanny job on the side and stepped up as the only editor of Fringe magazine.
We interviewed emerging artists, worked out of coffee shops and our basements, brought on a designer and tasted the dirt and the joy that comes with cutting your teeth in a grassroots endeavor. We put out 10 issues of the magazine before merging with Brite Revolution, a national music discovery website in need of solid editorial content.
With the new switch, we changed our name to Brite and grew quickly and exponentially. As editor-in-chief of the magazine, I oversaw features on nationally acclaimed artists like David Gray, Joss Stone, Jewel, Blake Shelton and The Civil Wars. I did all the managing, assigning and editing for every editorial piece of our website and our print publication. I managed about 40 freelance writers, while doing a good portion of the writing on my own and balancing daily Web deadlines and bi-monthly print deadlines.
My time as an editor has taught me how to balance creativity, research and deadlines. Now, I want to broaden my reach beyond music writing and editing and come alongside organizations and individuals to help people find their voice and communicate as effectively as possible. To me, the best part of editing is helping people deliver the exact message they want to communicate.
I still keep a journal, though it’s admittedly not as saccharinely adorable as the one I kept when I was five. I still take in life as I see it and delight in using words to capture snapshots of life, ideas or messages. No matter how technology changes or how digital our means of communication become, people will always want good content. And as for me, I will always want to help them deliver it.
