I got a job co-coordinating programs for teens at an educational nonprofit and went on to get my MEd at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. I began teaching high school English and theater, but there were a lot of teachers in the Minnesota workforce then, and as a newbie I couldn’t get full-time work. My husband and I were living on peanut butter and ramen.

Shifting Focus: Publishing

As luck would have it, I saw an ad placed by Llewellyn Worldwide, a metaphysical book publisher in St. Paul, for an editor to manage their top-selling line of annual publications, such as calendars, datebooks, and almanacs. It was an eclectic job requiring what Liam Neeson might call “a very particular set of skills,” including content acquisition, product design/development and layout, editing, and managing staff. Llewellyn had a model that was uncommon at the time—their editors designed and laid out their books in addition to editing. I’d learned the basics of these skills during my work at the nonprofit and from running university student groups and helping create underground ‘zines.

The kicker was that the candidate also needed a fairly comprehensive understanding of astrology. But I was raised with astrology. My grandmother had become a professional astrologer to make ends meet after she was widowed, and she made sure I was well-versed in it.

I managed several of Llewellyn’s bestselling annual astrology products and developed three new top sellers. I also represented the products at trade shows and conferences, which was ridiculously fun and helped me increase the author pool for the annuals products four times over.

Entering the Matrix: Startup

Astrology editing is a niche within a niche, and after five years at Llewellyn I was approached to join Star IQ, a Seattle astrology startup. The site published daily news stories with an astrological slant. I worked with authors to write and refine stories and managed the editorial calendar and a small team of designers and a front-end developer. We also created personalized astrology reports and custom content for partner sites. Content management systems were in their infancy, so we learned a lot of html in our attempts to MacGyver our CMS into a functional tool. Unfortunately, despite everyone’s dedication and an enthusiastic response from the astrological community, the company didn’t survive the dotcom bust.

Back to School: EdTech

I freelanced and did volunteer editing for a community newspaper before landing my next job, as senior editor at Committee for Children (CFC), a nonprofit that creates curricula for K-12 and advocates for antibullying legislation and other laws that protect kids. My initial responsibilities were to hire and manage the editorial team, which served both the product side of the house and the client-facing side, establish style guides, and of course edit the massive amount of content the organization produced, which included curricula and all their supports, training manuals, marketing emails and collateral, advocacy pieces, white papers, grant proposals, research articles intended for peer-reviewed journals, and video.

Despite the wide variety of tasks and the fact that this position brought the educational and editing/publishing threads of my career together, I figured I’d be at CFC for a year or two and then move on. I felt the future was digital, and that’s what I wanted to be doing. But the organization was changing rapidly from an educational publisher to an EdTech company, and because of my eclectic background and startup experience I was able to contribute in ways nobody—including me—anticipated.

My “a year or two” became almost 23 because I was constantly learning and doing something new, and I was pushing my team to do the same so they’d stay engaged and relevant. After establishing a style guide wiki, we created voice guides for every product. I absorbed everything I could about instructional design for kids and adults. I became the go-to person in house for copyright and trademark filing and permissions issues until the organization was able to hire in-house legal. My editors and I dove deeply into content management and design because initially we were the only people other than our single developer who understood how to use our CMS. As our platform grew and many other people became involved with content, we maintained central responsibility for designing, inputting, and maintaining product content.

I also had my entire team take UX writing courses, and we formed a cross-functional UX writing team with members of the design, UX, and platform teams to try to ensure our microcopy was clear and consistent. I pushed for Simple English and accessibility standards for program language and worked with my editors, content creators, and others to create guidelines for accessibility and inclusion. These included rules for when and how to use ALT attributes (tags) and how to write descriptive video transcripts for people who are blind or have low vision. When I departed CFC, I left behind extensive governance documentation for my colleagues to build on.

Moving On

I feel incredibly fortunate. For most of my career, I’ve worked with smart, creative, thoughtful people on issues and projects that matter to me. I’ve learned how to help writers shine, shift my focus between the minutia and the big picture of a project, collaborate with multiple product teams at the same time, produce killer UX copy, keep workflows on time and on budget, solve problems on the fly, navigate the quirks of a dozen types of CMS, and manage and mentor the people who report to me in ways that work for them.

I’m looking forward my next challenge. And since I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up, I’m open to many possibilities.