About

Upside Down, Inside Out? Right Side Up?

Well it depends upon who you ask. The shortened version is that I’m mom to a sweet and curious 3 1/2 year old Halloween baby and wife to a design obsessed, iPhone & Cocoa Developer. I’m an entrepreneur, a loyal friend, a mentor, a writer, a web-geek, a marketer, a strategic thinker, an artist, a lover of decaf coffee, fine food and traveling to far and away places. I would go out of my way to enjoy the sun warming my skin, the sound and smell of the ocean, my son’s giggles or a lazy Sunday brunch and a good book. In a similar way I would also go out of my way to exceed goals, drive results, work hard and lead good people to success.

If you want the long version, read on…

Originally from the Central Coast of California (Morro Bay/Los Osos)

I moved to the Northwest in 1989. I graduated from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington with a combined major of International Communications and Computer Science. I had originally gone into computer programing but after lots of classes and coding, including learning Haskell, I had an epiphany and decided that I really didn’t enjoy programming. During that time, I was working for Barnes & Noble as their Community Relations Manager, setting up author signings, advertising store events, promoting new books and managing all the communications and marketing for the store. That was where I discovered marketing and set my goals on a career in marketing. During this time I had also spent quite a bit of time creating and managing websites for friends and family businesses so marketing for technology was a natural progression.

My last year of college took me abroad to study in Greece where I spent time traveling all over the country. When my time was up in Greece I made the decision to continue on overseas and I spent the next few months traveling solo to over 32 countries in West/Eastern Europe and Asia. It was the most amazing time in my life and I loved almost ever minute of it. A lot of interesting stories came out of that time period….

I warded off exactly 7 attempted muggings on my various train rides in Eastern Europe (particularly bad was the night train from the Czech Repulic to Turkey) Fortunately they never actually got anything of value. I reminisced what it would be like to live in ancient times when I gave a speech at the Forum in Greece to hundreds of people. I lived an episode of the Twilight Zone when I boarded a supposed ferry in Patras Green to go to Italy, only to find out it was a shipping cargo boat and I was 1 of 2 passengers and the only woman on the entire ship. As the sunset I was ushered to a small room where I was locked in and not let out (for my own safety according to one of the crew) until we reached Brindisi Italy. While in Rome, I made a goal to eat Tiramisu on the steps of as many different churches around the city as I could while sketching each building. After 23 churches I decided that Rome has too many churches and that the Tiramisu that you buy in the little plastic cups at the convenience stores in Rome are much better then any you’ll find at a restaurant in the states. I visited 47+ museums and saw thousands of original masterpieces, only to walk right past the area where the Mona Lisa was and didn’t realize it till I was in another country.

Life often doesn’t work out the way you expect it to and you really have to make due with what it hands you. I had only been back a few months from overseas when my younger and only sister, Kelly lost her battle with cancer at the age of 23. It was a rough time in my life and I decided that it was very apparent that life was short and that I should pursue greater things for myself and my career. I tossed about 12 names of big cities into a bag and pulled one out. Of all the cities across the nation, Seattle (an hour drive north of where I was living) came out of the bag. I figured it was meant to be and went with it. I quite my job at the Office of the Administrator for the Courts with the State of Washington and moved to Seattle (Ballard to be exact).

I took a job managing a Marketing Department for a construction company in West Seattle. That job was a challenge as they had nothing in place when I started working there, no customer retention program, no database or even basic marketing collateral. I managed to get their website up and running, a CRM database in place and a marketing strategy to keep bringing customers in. I managed their Tradeshows and all the sales collateral and communications including seminars and workshops. It was a great learning experience, including how not to run a company. I wore so many hats in that position and had so many responsibilities that when they laid me off, I realized that I had accumulated the knowledge to run just about every aspect of their company (except the field construction work). The advantage of working for a small company or a startup is that you really do have to learn about the whole business and how everything works together to create success. You can’t be narrowly focused because you don’t have the budget to hire for every specific thing you need done. You just roll up your sleeves and do it yourself.

I met my to-be husband and shortly thereafter the tragedy of 9/11 hit and I got laid off. Given that every industry was slow, I had a lot of time to think about what to do next with my career. We thought about buying a house and I started paying attention to the real estate market in Seattle. That’s when I decided to start a real estate business and focus on lofts and urban housing downtown.

Through the years I built a very well known and successful real estate business. My hard work, keen sense of market trends, technology and my skills in communications, marketing and business strategy pushed my business to the top of the field. With my success came very long hours… it meant 80 hour work weeks including evenings and weekends most weeks. I worked and continued to grow my business and add agents to my team right up until 2006.

On Halloween in 2006 my son was born

and from then on I knew my days of working every evening and weekend were over. I passed my real estate business on to my partner Erin Brumett and went back to doing what I loved, marketing and spending more time with my family. I started consulting for technology startups who I assisted with growth strategies and brand development. I started a consulting business in 2007 and have worked with many companies since then in real estate, computer hardware and software.

In most recent days I’ve spent working at Synology America Corp., a startup in network attached storage, consulting in marketing and pr, spending lots of time with my family and finding a happy balance between my family and enjoying my career.