Storytelling
"I get an overhead projector in here? Yay! Yay! Yay!"

The lanky teacher did mock ballet leaps of joy as as the blocky equipment rolled into his classroom, pushed by a colleague who spotted me sitting at a desk, pen in hand.

"Uh oh, those yays and jumps are going to be written down for posterity now," she told him. "This one was in my classroom the other day and wrote so much down in her notebook, I'm pretty sure that she recorded every bead of sweat on my face."

Over the years, I've interviewed and written about a fair number of artists and entertainers. And while I've enjoyed that immensely, it pales in comparison to giving lesser-known people rock-star treatment, particularly those who do meaningful work. I am interested in people and finding out why they do what they do, whether I am writing 150 words or 15,000 about them. It is my hope that readers come away from my writing with an intimate sense of the people, places or issues that I cover.

Skills
I am at least 70 percent geek. From my earliest newspaper jobs, I felt that learning the technology involved in publishing was important to my writing. I am well-versed in the software and tools that designers and programmers use. As a result, I've created content for magazines, public radio news broadcasts, web sites, email newsletters and even cell phones over the years. I can construct in-depth narratives for print publications, but I also understand the demands of new media, and have experience writing and packaging digital content.