I'm a web designer, developer, and project manager who lives and works in Annapolis, Maryland and the Greater Baltimore/DC Metro area. I would love to work on–or provide consulting–for your website, mobile, email, or online marketing project.
I consider web design and development a great pleasure and enjoy creating high-quality results. Versatility and adaptibility with new technologies and situations is a point of pride.
I'm open to long-term contracts, full-time employment, and special projects (website redesign, hosting, social media consulting, and more). I'm happy with work with your existing website or team, or help bring your dreams to reality. I can also accomodate larger projects by reaching out to a team of top-notch professional designers and developers in the area.
I attended UMBC–starting as a second-semester sophomore–where I earned both a BS and MS in Information Systems Management, along with a Web Design Certificate. I graduated Cum Laude.
Information Architecture and many of the design courses I took during my time at college inspired me to follow the path of web design and development. I also excelled in management and project management courses that prepared me for being part of and leading a team of professionals.
I'm fluent in front-end web development (HTML, CSS3, JavaScript – desktop and mobile) and proficient with traditional back-end languages (PHP, ColdFusion, ASP.NET). I also have extension education and experience with web design (Information Architecture, SDLC, layouts, email), and graphic design (banners, logos, layouts, and more with Photoshop CC). I've also fully managed projects both solo and in teams.
I've worked for small businesses, government, government contractors, non-profits, and numerous personal/hobby projects over the decade-plus I've been working on the web.
This is just a small sample of my work. I'd be more than happy to provide more samples upon request.
When I arrived at TCS in early 2012, the homepage needed a facelift that accomodated several stakeholders without delving into a major site redesign. Prior to the deployment of a carousel featuring a product from each Business Unit, they were using a Flash animation. I deployed a fairly simple jQuery-powered cycling carousel with slots to accomodate space for each competing business unit.
I am not a fan of carousels as a design element, unless there seems to be no other option. I attempted to counter-act the issues that come with implementing carousels (content is hidden until revealed with a user action or time elapsing) by designing large thumbnails beneath it that provide the title/core content of the slide as well as visuals. It tested very well with our stakeholders.
TCS' Navigation division requested that the marketing team (which included me as developer/designer and a dedicated graphic designer) assist in the design and development of a small stand-alone landing site for their suite of navigation products listed under the Networks In Motion™ brand name.
The designer and I worked with a small team of stakeholders to design and deploy a responsive site to accomodate their needs. The required skillset included HTML, JavaScript/jQuery, CSS3, responsive design, and Photoshop.
TCS' Satellites division requested the design and development of a small stand-alone landing site for their line of portable, low-cost satellite products, in association with Norhtrop Grummand and Lockheed Martin.
I worked with a small team of stakeholders to design and deploy a responsive site to accomodate their needs. This was a larger-than-typical project because it involved working within ASP.NET and the CMS, Sitefinity, to develop a template for the page to accomodate updates via the CMS. It was my first exposure to the process and lead me to a greater understanding of the back-end.
Work with Information Safeguard for HCU has been an on-going recent project. I developed the entire back-end for an online version of homecare business certification. It involved extensive HTML, PHP (forms, backend), and MySQL (application and user data) development work.
The major project I was given upon my hiring at the American Association of Physics Teachers was to redesign the vast majority of their website. The goals were to improve navigation (a primary goal—dropdowns required JavaScript), look, feel, and standards compliance. The website was run on a ColdFusion platform with the CommonSpot content management system. The redesign involved keeping the content management system and making use of its templating system. The site of the website amounts to a couple of thousand content pages in conjunction with numerous forms and other database-driven pages. Many of these would eventually need to be manually tweaked.
I headed the project up and used a systems development lifecycle approach to the redesign. I started with stakeholder interviews and surveys to gather requirements. In conjunction with meetings with staff throughout the process, I produced blueprints, wireframes, and several iterations of the redesign.
The project was successfully launched in November of 2009, in little over a year. I was really proud of this accomplishment considering I am the sole web designer and one of two web staff at the association.
The AAPT eMentoring program was launched in September 2010. This was a new program that was devised as a way to match up new high school physics teachers with experienced teachers. The goal of the project was to allow a regional coordinator to find and match local mentors and "mentees" with one another so that they could communicate and share ideas electronically.
We worked with a few stakeholders (internally and externally) to develop initial drafts. This project was not developed in a traditional manner due to time and resource constraints. My portion of this project involved development of an initial logo, icons, design, and some development work in ColdFusion. I continue to work with the marketing team to market this program and enhance the design and functionality of the site.
The Naval Academy was my first career position as a web developer/designer. As such, I did a lot of work internally and behind the scenes to individual division pages. The video player was probably the biggest feature that I created that made it the the front page.
The United States Naval Academy developed a series of mini-stories that would be used to promote diversity at the academy. They needed these videos converted to a web-friendly format and placed on the website
Using an open-source Flash/JavaScript platform, I converted raw video files to flash video and designed a video player.
This was one among many of the projects I was tasked with at USNA. Nearly all projects had a goal of simplicity and cleanliness. They wanted to portray a feeling of military professionalism.