About Emily
Who am I?
I’m a User Experience Designer, Information Architect and Strategist.
I am a bridge between technology and people. I can see the big picture and the technical details. I specialize in research, prototype development, strategy development, and roadmapping. I have notable experience in healthcare, and with intranets.
I also read and write code, and enjoy collaborative and agile development. I'm a trained computer scientist.
My MVP skill is making clear diagrams, and using them to facilitate discussion, and to document understanding of complex systems. I am smart, and genuinely curious and caring. I can take a big nebulous situation and make sense of it. I can see through the muck and I'm organized. I can provide valuable perspective.
How can I help your product, project or startup?
What have I accomplished so far?
I co-founded two healthcare data startups that are still in business. I was part of the early Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 consulting world. I've worked succesfully in enterprise healthcare IT. I've also raised two daughters who are really good kids, art majors, one who graduated in 2019, and the other who is set to graduate in 2021. They both feel that there is a bright future in sustainable farming.
What would I like to do next?
I would like to contribute to good people doing interesting things with technology and in the real world. I'm still fascinated by the web every day.
Other things about me
In the "Before Times," I used to like to go out and see live music with lots of other people and stuff like that, and loved going to art openings and events in Duluth, Minnesota, where I live. I loved meeting my friends out and having friends over. I loved playing MahJongg inside at a small table. I loved not worrying so much about my kids, and the world we've given them to face. I loved being able to visit my sister in Paris. In the "Now Times" I'm grateful for my abilities, my daily life, my kids, my family, and my friends. I enjoy going outside and staying active. I look forward to the ski group meeting back up this winter. We'll have our masks on. I like to make art. My preferred pronouns are she/her. Black Lives Matter!
About this site
In 2011, when my focus shifted away from running a small healthcare data and consulting business, to immersing myself in healthcare IT, my day-to-day relationship with code changed. In my senior analyst role at Essentia Health, I needed to know enterprise IT and packaged software. I'm happy with what I learned about healthcare and enterprise IT in that role, and going down that path was my goal at the time, but I'm happy to be back doing web design and development, which I love. When I was the president of Ancilla Partners and in charge of UX, I also contributed front-end code in a collaborative Ruby on Rails enviroment. When I worked in consulting at GSDesign, I often handed production-ready code from the prototypes I built directly to the FED team because it was efficient and smart to work this way. So in May of 2020, when I found myself, as many of us have, not working at that job anymore, I felt that it was important for me to get caught up with front-end code again. Code is important to who I am as a person.
As of this writing, this is a hand-coded site that I did for the intellectual exercise and to prove to myself I could get a grip on what was going on in the modern world. Is it perfect? No. Did I start back on a path I'm happy about? Yes. As far as HTML5/CSS3, there is still a lot I look forward to doing, like CSS animation, and I don't claim to be completely "up-to-date" yet, but I'm happy that I made the decision to re-learn what I needed to know, even though it took some time. I've gotten a really good handle on Git, GitHub, and Mobile First and I also learned a lot about myself. I am a UNIX whiz now! I wrote a script so my CSS doesn't cache. It is always reassuring to know that I fundamentally do understand technology. I can find answers. I know how to test. This stuff is not easy! I probably wasted some time where WordPress would have been fine, but I don't regret it. I'll likely switch this to a CMS/templated envioronment soon, because it will probably look and function better, but I'll continue this exploration on other parts of the web, because it's good for my brain, and the world needs us to keep making things.