I am currently the President of Third Place Technologies (and formerly the founding Executive Director), a 501c3 organization with a mission to foster interdisciplinary collaboration at the intersection of art and technology in the Pacific Northwest.  I developed our original strategy and mission statement, recruited our board of directors, secured our non-profit status, applied for grants, managed contingent staff, interns, and volunteers, performed research, developed community analytics dashboards, participated in artist/research communities through papers and presentations. Since we evolved our mission in 2019 to focus exclusively on art and tech communities, I took the lead in developing our business plan for a gallery and maker space studio (now Sky Artworks), secured funding, including donations and grants, managed the remodeling of our studio and gallery spaces, recruited members and staff, and organized numerous large-scale collaborative exhibitions and events at the intersection of art and technology. Through our partnership with Totally Legit, I also manage art shows in our sibling arts-oriented makerspace in Seattle, WA, Passable.Art.

It has been my privilege to serve as a Town Councilmember for the Town of Skykomish since 2015. As a portal to the Cascade Mountains in the Pacific Northwest, the Town plays a unique role in not only supporting the needs of our local community, but also taking care of our surrounding environment and welcoming visitors to our beautiful region.  My mission is to promote a high quality of life for our citizens through improved physical and social infrastructure, balancing our needs for economic growth with our authenticity as a historic mountain town.

My priorities have included improved access to broadband, emergency preparedness, affordable housing, and community venues and events. Most importantly, my role as an experienced project manager, researcher, and community organizer has helped me engage with the community to help it articulate and meet its own goals. I am the Chair of our Technology Committee, and led an initiative to secure broadband for our region including writing, securing, and managing a $500K grant from the Washington State Department of Commerce. We are currently seeking to also improve our energy resilience through the use of renewable energy. In response to recent natural events, I worked with the Town to update our emergency preparedness plan and get it approved by the Council. As our local economy is dominated by ecotourism, I have also secured and managed several grants to improve tourist experiences for local businesses and visitors. Finally, I believe strongly in the important role of arts and culture in bringing a community together, so have advocated for and achieved an increased prioritization for supporting cultural activities by the Town.

Totally Legit is a creative collaboration group with the mission to have fun innovating with art and technology projects, and share our work through creative exhibitions and events. I have taken a lead creative and organizing role as a founding member since 2014. Most of my interdisciplinary art/tech, collaborative installations are created in the context of Totally Legit.

We are an interdisciplinary group of artists, technologists, designers, makers, engineers, and builders who share a passion for art, technology, and culture. We have created everything from interactive sound and lighting experiences to giant murals, often incorporating futuristic themes. We seek to challenge traditional artistic boundaries by treating everything as a creative medium — including lasers, LEDs, painting, Arduinos, culture hacking, totally controlled lighting, pinball machines, events, community organizing, and so forth.

In 2021 we we opened our own maker space and collaborative studio, Passable, that hosts posts pop up art shows during the Capitol Hill artwalk in collaboration with our sibling 501c3 nonprofit organization, Third Place Technologies. We also organize an annual art and tech creative retreat called Electric Sky as a Totally Legit / Third Place Technologies endeavor as well.

I spent ten years at Microsoft Research, a world-class research and development organization, in early-stage incubation teams. I started as a Researcher in the Social Computing and Community Technologies Groups, and ended as the Research Team Lead for FUSE Labs (Future Social Experiences). Working in the context of an innovation lab, my role was as much creative director as social scientist, working with interdisciplinary groups as team and project manager (researchers, developers, designers, artists) to identify potential areas for innovation, ideate, design, prototype, and then assess through the research process, in the domain of  innovative social media and community technology solutions. We researched social technologies expected to impact Microsoft products two to ten years in the future, and this work led to numerous prototypes, papers, patents, and academic service roles as a part of my deliverables were to engage with the broader research community.  See my CV for a full list of these activities.

I founded a professional conferencing social software startup with two co-founders, building on my prior work in the social networking, conference management, and community technologies space. My role in the early stages of this startup was to collaboratively ideate, design, implement, deploy, and assess our first prototypes, which incorporated novel, lightweight profiles and social match-making features. I also helped to support the startup by continuing my research activities as a consultant with numerous other local startups in the social networking space. Pathable evolved into an award-winning conference management tool, and successfully sold to a large company in 2020.