About me . . .
I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, obtained a BA in political science and Spanish from Denison University, then headed for New York City and a job with the Social Security Administration. During my years as a bilingual claims representative, I had to "know the manual"—dozens of binders containing rules that changed on a daily basis. A daunting task, to say the least, but one that introduced me to technical content in a big way.
Meanwhile, the student in me yearned to be back in school. I took business classes, studied French, and eventually found my way to the graduate program in linguistics at New York University. After finishing an MA, I entered the PhD program (concentrating on acoustic phonetics and computational linguistics) and was hired as a research assistant by the NYU Institute for Speech and Language Sciences. Computer science classes brought programming into my life, and I spent the next decade happily writing software for classes and work. I also wrote technical materials, copyedited journal articles, managed speech-recording projects, and assisted with classes.
After graduating, I worked as a research professor and linguistic consultant. While my two sons were in elementary school, I switched to volunteer work, which provided opportunities to write, edit, teach, and manage projects. Best of all, it forced me to acquire some website-design skills. I soon found that working with online content allows me to combine what I enjoy most: language and code. I returned to the paid workforce as a freelance copyeditor and linguistic consultant.
In my spare time, I practice fiber crafts (spinning, knitting, weaving), read (mostly fiction), and learn languages (human and computer).
I am a member of the Editorial Freelancers Association. For more details and my resume, please see my Editorial Freelancers Asssociation profile and LinkedIn profile.
