My life has taken many paths to get me where I am now. With a background in art I ended up working in theater when after I got my bachelor's degree. I designed and built costumes for professional theater and several colleges. It was enjoyable and was never boring, but it had its drawbacks: long hours, working nights and weekends, really poor pay, no paid time off, and usually no benefits. I did however, get a lot of experience working with people who all had their own needs, organizing large projects, meeting deadlines and working within a budget.
I finally had enough of the drawbacks after a few years, so I took a job with great hours, high pay, PTO and wonderful benefits. Unfortunately, it was highly stressful and seriously unfulfilling. I worked in collections for AT&T. Talking to people who owe money on their phone bill all day can be soul crushing. However, it did give me the time and money to figure out what I really wanted to do. I started taking some night classes and I fell in love with web design and development.
At the time, I didn’t know what direction I wanted to go in so I took both programming and design classes, earning an associates degree. I am one of those rare right brain and left brain people. Along with classes like Photoshop, Illustrator, typography, HTML and CSS, I took PHP, Java, ASP.net and SQL. Ultimately, I found that I was happiest designing and doing front end stuff: HTML, CSS and javascript. I joke that I know enough programming to be dangerous, but it has served me well since I can recognize what I’m looking at and wrap output in CSS classes.
Professionally, I have done projects from design to launch or just done front end. Much of the time I have worked with CMSs and have experience with several. I have worked at an agency and also done freelance. As much as I like getting hyper focused on a design problem or a page of code, I also like working with clients. I’m interested in helping their businesses succeed.
After backing off full time work to do some freelance and raise my twin daughters through their formative years, I found that I needed to decide what going back to work full time would look like for me. I decided that I wanted to improve my design skills and update my knowledge of UI design. Once again, doing the whole process appealed to me so I pursued both UX and UI design. It brings together my people, design and technical skills. I hope that the next phase of my life is as interesting as the last few.
Include, but aren't limited to:
Figma
Photoshop
Illustrator
HTML5
CSS3
Javascript
Bootstrap
DNN
Wordpress
I have a dual citizenship: United States and Italy.
I was born and have lived my whole life in the U.S. but was able to get Italian citizenship through ancestry. I do speak some Italian and am striving to learn more. Non parlo bene l’italiano, ma posso avere una conversazione elementare.
I live in the Cleveland, Ohio area.
My family is important and I love spending time with my husband, daughters and four rescue cats.
I like to cook, travel, garden and do yoga. I read incessantly, mostly mysteries.
My favorite holiday is Halloween and I love to decorate and make creepy food.
Because of my love of Halloween, I got involved in decorating for the dances at my daughters’ middle school. Decorations for the Halloween dance? Count me in! I assisted the first year and then took over as the PTA Dance Chair for the second year.
Middle School Spring Dance 2024
To go with the theme of Under the Sea, I designed this disco octopus as the centerpiece for the dance.
One of the challenges of decorating for the dances is the enormity of the room. Things have to be BIG to standout. The octopous is 32 ft. across from tentical end to tentical end.
The other challenge is the tight budget. It is built out of LED light strings, bubble wrap, wire and lots and lots of packing tape - mostly generously donated by parents. The head is a 5 ft. beach ball.
I had wonderful help building it and hanging it, but I still can't believe we pulled it off. It ended up being borrowed for events at the high school and another middle school.
