My story: who I am and how I got to here

I’ve built a career around designing systems that make getting stuff done easier. That means content systems that make it easier for both you and your users to navigate your content, automation and workflows that take busy work off your desk, and websites that look and feel like magic.

Here’s a bit more about my journey and all things that make me who I am and that have influenced the way I work.

Writer and editor

I always wanted to be a writer. I majored in writing as part of my mixed-media degree at university and some of my first jobs were copywriting and editorial roles. I learned the ropes of what made good content and how to pull a story together, a skill that has only become sharper over the years as I have honed it to create brand stories for my clients.

The art & production years

The geeky kind of art, never the cool kind…

My first foray into art, design and production was producing page layouts for science and medical magazines, culminating in an exciting and skill-building period at Nature Publishing Group in London (now Springer Nature). You mightn’t know you know it, but they’re the gang you hear about on the radio whenever there’s a new scientific or medical innovation — ‘published in Nature‘. The art I was drawing was mostly penises and biological diagrams. My team of art designers aced the local pub challenge of ‘first to draw an accurate diagram of the human body’. We did it in under a minute and even had a gall bladder. That’s right, so cool 🤓.

Workflow wiz

I moved from art and production into special projects at Nature and landed the exciting task of moving our traditional print-first production workflow to a digital-first model. This was 2009/2010. The first iPad was talked about but hadn’t yet been released. We were designing systems around a technology that we hadn’t even seen yet. I went full geek on this and became completely obsessed with the wonders of workflows and all the things I could make happen now that this new era of automation was opening up. This was how I became known as a source of knowledge on workflow automation and started fielding calls from magazines across Europe and the US for advice on how they could set up their own digital-first systems.

Teacher

One of the great things about building stuff that is completely new is that you then get to teach people how to use it. I already knew I enjoyed teaching, as I’d done loads of sport coaching for kids as a teen and in my early twenties. Teaching adults in the workplace was a different skill, but one that I quickly found rewarding. I loved making the complex simple and sharing the joy of this (at the time) new technology. 

When I moved back to Sydney I bolstered my teaching skills by gaining my Cert IV in Training and Assessment. This qualification has continued to be useful as I run workshops and training sessions for my clients. It’s also something I always come back to whenever I create new training materials for the Studio Clvr training library.

Coder, marketer, jack-of-all-trades

I often think of this period of my life as the ‘New York years’. I moved from London to New York on the tails of an amazing job opportunity that didn’t work out the way I’d planned. Sometimes things not working out is exactly what you need. I met some cool people. I got to play Keith Richard’s guitar. I taught myself code and off the back of my Nature days, made some awesome apps to detect heart disease and gastrointestinal issues. I designed packaging, I branded small businesses, I did marketing for this and built websites for that. I did the digital nomad thing for a few years. Then I moved back to Sydney and Studio Clvr was born.

Web designer and digital strategist

After years of muddling through trying to be the marketer for everyone, I made the call that all business leaders eventually come to. I took a long hard look at what I was good at, what I enjoyed most and what my clients were getting the most impact from. I niched down hard on web design and digital strategy around workflow integration — pulling together my skills from those Nature years with everything I’d learned working with small businesses and startups.

Read more about how I rebuilt my business for the better in Business re-invention: the nine steps I used to re-think everything. 

The ‘real’ me

So, who am I? As a kid I was an explorer and a tree climber. I once made a skateboard out of a plank of wood and some old rollerskates and wasn’t nearly as scared as I should have been about attempting to ride it down a steep hill.   

Musically, I’m an indie kid at heart with punk roots. The regular rotation on my Spotify account is bands like the Pixies, Smashing Pumpkins, The Strokes, Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, Cat Power. I also roll out a good dose of Nina Simone on the regular. Answers to the big questions: Stones and Blur.*

I tried really hard to learn to surf and snowboard in my 20s and skateboard in my 30s after some work colleagues gave me lessons with an NYC skater dude. I got a “you go, girl” from a playground mum, and feel chuffed for surviving a skate through the streets of the East Village without injury. A brief moment of glory amidst a great deal of falling on my arse.

These days I safely scooter around—not an electric one, the kind where I am the battery—and go on occasional kayaks on the beautiful Sydney Harbour.

I love planning and going on epic adventures with my pretty cool 5-year-old. Road trips with retro motels, learning to play chess on 24h flights, sleeping on a train!!! (peak awesomeness for the kiddo).

*The biggest getting-to-know-you questions when I was coming up were 1. ‘Beatles or Stones?’ and 2. ‘Blur or Oasis?’.