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Résumé

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

Interpersonal Skills

  • High­ly ethical
  • Empa­thet­ic
  • Patient
  • Clear com­mu­ni­ca­tor
  • Team play­er
  • Orga­nized
  • Adaptable/flexible
  • Unflap­pable, with a calm­ing presence
  • Pos­i­tive, upbeat attitude
  • Fast, eager learner

Experience

  • Tech­ni­cal Cus­tomer Sup­port (email, phone, chat, social media, desk side)
  • Writ­ing (doc­u­men­ta­tion, blog posts, email tem­plates, etc.)
  • Man­u­al QA (Win­dows, Mac, HP-UX, Web-based)
  • Pro­duc­tive remote work­er since 1990

Technical Abilities

  • macOS, Win­dows, Linux
  • iOS, Android
  • Zen­desk, Inter­com, Targetprocess
  • Jira, Asana, Trello
  • Git, GitHub, GitLab
  • HTML5, CSS, Word­Press, Document360, GitBook
  • SQL, MySQL, Post­greSQL, Mari­aDB, MongoDB
  • Python, JavaScript
  • Test­Lodge, BrowserStack
  • EDI (Tele­com)
  • Snag­It, GIMP, iPhoto/Photos

Employment History

Senior Customer Solutions Engineer at CivicScience Inc. — 2022 to Present (remote)

Pro­vide enter­prise sup­port for B2B firm pro­vid­ing up-to-the-minute mar­ket intelligence

  • Sup­port pub­lish­ers in their col­lec­tion of data using CSS, HTML, and JavaScript
  • Sup­port data clients in their use of pro­pri­etary research database
  • Liaise with clients’ tech­ni­cal teams for instal­la­tion and con­fig­u­ra­tion of our code on their sites
  • Write SQL to access Mari­aDB for con­fig­u­ra­tion of client accounts
  • Doc­u­ment com­plex prod­ucts via online help arti­cles in Knowl­ed­ge­Owl, Document360, Inter­com, Git­Book, and in-prod­uct tooltips
  • Tran­si­tioned knowl­edge base from Inter­com to Document360, then to KnowledgeOwl
  • Test prod­uct from end to end, set­ting up test track­ing soft­ware (Test­Lodge), cre­at­ing & run­ning test cas­es, and par­tic­i­pat­ing in UAT
  • Report and track bugs using Jira
  • Cre­ate inter­nal doc­u­men­ta­tion in Con­flu­ence and Train­u­al
  • Con­fig­ure Inter­com for in-prod­uct sup­port using mes­sen­ger, prod­uct tours, and banners
  • Used Hot­jar to exam­ine cus­tomers’ use of products
  • Used Google Tag Man­ag­er to add Inter­com, Hot­jar, and Hub­spot track­ing infor­ma­tion to our products
  • Onboard users for AI chat­bot using Charge­bee and Auth0
  • Assist prod­uct own­er with prod­uct newslet­ter set up in Hub­spot
  • Run month­ly webi­na­rs with prod­uct owner

Technical Support Engineer at Travel Syndication Technology LLC — 2018 to 2022 (remote)

Pro­vid­ed enter­prise sup­port for B2B2C SaaS firm that pro­vides trav­el soft­ware and ser­vices to AAA/CAA clubs

  • Reduced open sup­port tick­ets from 1200+ to less than 400 in the first three months of employment
  • Pro­vid­ed white glove, enter­prise sup­port via email, phone, and screen-shar­ing sessions
  • Researched cus­tomer tick­ets using JSON & XML logs, Full­Sto­ry or Smart­Look, and queries of MySQL and Mon­goDB databases
  • Repro­duced cus­tomer-report­ed bugs, then cre­at­ed and mon­i­tored defect reports in Jira
  • Com­mu­ni­cat­ed with stake­hold­ers regard­ing cus­tomer feedback
  • Filed and mon­i­tored prob­lem reports with providers
  • Eval­u­at­ed help desk options, then migrat­ed sup­port tick­ets from Tar­get­process to Zen­desk
  • Admin­is­tered Zen­desk instance (Sup­port, Talk, Guide, and Explore)
  • Col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly set up and super­vised remote call cen­ter with 104 agents who ser­vice 98% of AAA’s trav­el customers
  • Cre­at­ed and main­tained doc­u­men­ta­tion for inter­nal and exter­nal users in Con­flu­ence and Guide
  • Admin­is­tered Google Work­space, Jira, Okta, and Slack
  • Used Explore to sup­ply call cen­ter and in-house report­ing to executives
  • Man­aged cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ca­tions lists and sent out all noti­fi­ca­tions to them using Google Groups and Con­stant Contact

Freelance Consultant — 1990 to Present

I was a full-time con­sul­tant for sev­er­al years and main­tained my con­sult­ing prac­tice at a reduced lev­el when employed by oth­er firms. I pro­vide a range of ser­vices to indi­vid­u­als and small busi­ness­es includ­ing inter­net pres­ence con­sult­ing and devel­op­ment, deter­mi­na­tion of soft­ware and hard­ware needs, and train­ing cus­tomers on var­i­ous hard­ware and soft­ware prod­ucts. In the past, I also built PCs to cus­tomers’ specifications.

Senior Technical Advisor at Apple, Inc. — 2014 to 2018 (remote)

Hired in April 2014 as a tier one phone Mac advi­sor. Moved to chat sup­port in June and back to the phones for iOS sup­port in Decem­ber. Pro­mot­ed to tier two iOS advi­sor in June 2015, then to tier two Mac+ advi­sor in December.

  • Con­sis­tent­ly achieved 100% cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion rat­ings over mul­ti­ple report­ing peri­ods while main­tain­ing excel­lent call han­dle times in a high-vol­ume, fast-paced environment
  • Sup­port­ed Mac com­put­ers, macOS (10.6.8 and up), iOS devices (iPhones, iPads, iPod Touch­es), iPods, and Apple Watches
  • Sup­port­ed iTunes and iCloud on Mac and Windows
  • Sup­port­ed Pages, Num­bers, Keynote, Photos/iPhoto, iMovie, Garage­Band, and third-par­ty appli­ca­tions for any­thing affect­ing instal­la­tion, launch­ing of the appli­ca­tions, and uninstallation
  • Advised and men­tored tier one advi­sors as well as tak­ing esca­lat­ed calls
  • Han­dled all esca­lat­ed calls, which typ­i­cal­ly involved encryp­tion, data loss or cor­rup­tion, pass­words and cer­tifi­cates, data migra­tion, back­up prob­lems, net­work­ing issues, adware, Ter­mi­nal com­mands, and requests for a supervisor
  • Removed mal­ware and edu­cat­ed con­sumers on avoid­ing infection
  • Esca­lat­ed cas­es to engi­neer­ing staff if they could not be resolved imme­di­ate­ly, then worked with engi­neers and cus­tomers until the cas­es were brought to a sat­is­fac­to­ry resolution
  • Served as scribe for team meet­ings and set up team wiki space

Technical Support Maven at Owl Insights — 2016 to 2017 (remote)

Act­ed as sole tech­ni­cal sup­port provider to inter­nal and exter­nal clients of health­care SaaS start­up via phone and email. (Con­trac­tor, part-time)

  • Main­tained excel­lent sup­port response time while com­plet­ing projects promptly
  • Onboard­ed new clients
  • Worked with MySQL tables and web inter­face to health­care app to resolve clients’ issues
  • Per­formed QA tests to assist agile devel­op­ment team
  • Cre­at­ed HTML help files for sys­tem using BBE­d­it and updat­ed them using Git via GitHub
  • Record­ed instruc­tion­al videos for help sys­tem using Snag­it and uploaded them using GitHub and FTP
  • Cre­at­ed oth­er help doc­u­ments as needed
  • Migrat­ed sup­port records from an OSTick­et to Desk.com and served as Desk administrator
  • Used Asana, then Jira to track projects
  • Researched chat solu­tions for inte­gra­tion into product

Personal Technology Expert, Support.com — 2013 to 2014 (remote)

Pro­vid­ed remote sup­port to cus­tomers of BPO clients such as Com­cast, Office Depot, Office Max, Radio Shack, and Sta­ples. Hired as a Remote Access Tech­ni­cian (tier one) in March 2013 and pro­mot­ed to Per­son­al Tech­nol­o­gy Expert (tier two) in August of that year.

  • Achieved excel­lent call han­dle times and first-call res­o­lu­tion rates while main­tain­ing high cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion ratings
  • Iden­ti­fied and resolved any issue pre­vent­ing con­nec­tion to the inter­net or wire­less net­works (com­put­ers, smart­phones, tablets, routers, game con­soles, e‑readers, print­ers, media devices, etc.)
  • Ana­lyzed and fixed prob­lems with Win­dows and Mac sys­tems and applications
  • Diag­nosed and reme­di­at­ed mal­ware on Win­dows and Mac systems
  • Pin­point­ed hard­ware issues and rec­om­mend­ed path for resolution
  • Con­fig­ured new com­put­ers for cus­tomers or opti­mized exist­ing systems
  • Explained tech­nolo­gies to cus­tomers using non-tech­ni­cal terms so that they might bet­ter use their hard­ware and soft­ware or under­stand what need­ed to be done to resolve their issues
  • Assist­ed tier one rep­re­sen­ta­tives with dif­fi­cult cas­es and took esca­lat­ed calls

Stay-at-Home Mother/Home Technical Guru — 2000 to 2012

  • Home­schooled daugh­ter from fourth grade through high school graduation. 
    • Served as pri­ma­ry instructor
    • Devel­oped curriculum
    • Coor­di­nat­ed addi­tion­al instruction
    • Main­tained port­fo­lio and oth­er records to doc­u­ment progress
    • Daugh­ter con­sis­tent­ly scored in 98th per­centile on stan­dard­ized tests and grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Nebras­ka at Oma­ha with honors
  • Man­aged house­hold of five humans and up to six animals
    • Devel­oped and bal­anced budget
    • Acquired sup­plies and mon­i­tored inventory
    • Kept all fam­i­ly records and man­aged correspondence
    • Man­aged house­hold tasks, assign­ing them to fam­i­ly mem­bers by capa­bil­i­ty and availability
    • Gam­i­fied tasks in order to gen­er­ate more inter­est from and appeal to children
  • Cre­at­ed and main­tained mul­ti­ple websites
    • Used HTML, CSS, Word­Press, Medi­aWi­ki, JavaScript, PHP and CGI
    • Exper­i­ment­ed with Dru­pal and Joom­la
    • Wrote con­tent for six sites in addi­tion to tech­ni­cal administration
    • Served as web­mas­ter for the oth­er sites and nev­er had a secu­ri­ty breach or expe­ri­enced any data loss
  • Set up and main­tained home net­work and mul­ti­ple desk­top and lap­top PCs, uti­liz­ing Red Hat Lin­ux, Sam­ba, var­i­ous ver­sions of Win­dows, and lat­er Win­dows 200x server
  • Kept very old and new com­put­ers run­ning dif­fer­ent oper­at­ing sys­tems work­ing prop­er­ly, com­mu­ni­cat­ing with each oth­er and the inter­net and avoid­ed mal­ware infec­tion and oth­er secu­ri­ty issues.
  • Set up and sup­port­ed iOS gad­gets, Android smart­phones, Palm PDAs, and oth­er devices as need­ed to keep the fam­i­ly in touch with each oth­er and the world
  • Peri­od­i­cal­ly eval­u­at­ed group­ware solu­tions avail­able to home users and pub­lished web­site arti­cles report­ing results

QA Analyst, DARTmail project, DoubleClick, Inc. — 1999 to 2000

DART­Mail was an opt-in email mar­ket­ing sys­tem that allowed adver­tis­ers to man­age their mail­ing lists, mea­sure response to ads, and tar­get mes­sages to con­sumers based on their expressed preferences.

  • Cre­at­ed and exe­cut­ed test plans
  • Per­formed web-based test­ing of user inter­face using mul­ti­ple browsers and plat­forms to check authen­ti­ca­tion and all links, forms, etc., through each step of development
  • Did email-based test­ing of sub­scrip­tion and response systems
  • Ran load tests
  • Used SQL to pop­u­late and test databases
  • Used pro­pri­etary data­base to track issues

Lead QA Analyst/Documentation Specialist, GE Information Systems/ASI Services, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia — 1998 to 1999

Clear­ing­house Project — GEIS act­ed as a sub­con­trac­tor to Tel­cor­dia to devel­op a sys­tem for pro­cess­ing order­ing and pro­vi­sion­ing trans­ac­tions between Sprint and eight local tele­phone com­pa­nies. The project involved EDI and var­i­ous pro­pri­etary data for­mats on HP-UX servers as well as Ora­cle and GEIS’ prod­ucts Enter­prise Sys­tem (an e‑commerce gate­way), EDI Appli­ca­tion Inte­gra­tor, and EDI Express. Hired as a junior tester, pro­mot­ed two days lat­er to test lead for the project.

  • Wrote .ksh scripts to auto­mate testing
  • Per­formed SQL queries for test­ing and test­ed web-based and Win­dows interfaces
  • Cre­at­ed, doc­u­ment­ed, and imple­ment­ed test­ing pro­ce­dures, plans, and cas­es from cus­tomer require­ments, tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, and local tele­phone com­pa­ny order­ing guide­line doc­u­ments for inte­gra­tion, func­tion­al, and regres­sion tests
  • Wrote test­ing pro­ce­dures man­u­al used by test­ing team
  • Cre­at­ed project sched­ules and man­aged test­ing resources in MS Project
  • Tracked issues in pro­pri­etary database
  • Recruit­ed, trained and super­vised testers
  • Act­ed as liai­son to Sprint, Tel­cor­dia, local tele­phone com­pa­nies and sev­er­al teams of developers
  • I was trained in the use of Segue Silk Suite but we did not use it for the project

Manager, Support/Information Technology, RelevantKnowledge, Inc. — 1997

Orig­i­nal­ly hired to cre­ate and man­age a tech­ni­cal sup­port depart­ment for a com­pa­ny that want­ed to be “the Nielsens for the web.” The soft­ware was­n’t ever devel­oped to the point that there was any­thing to sup­port so I did oth­er work instead.

  • Test­ed inter­net-relat­ed soft­ware in Win­dows envi­ron­ment and worked with soft­ware devel­op­ment team pro­vid­ing feed­back on soft­ware design and qual­i­ty control
  • Doc­u­ment­ed soft­ware and wrote mate­ri­als for end users and clients
  • Pro­vid­ed all inter­nal train­ing and sup­port for busi­ness oper­a­tions personnel
  • Cre­at­ed train­ing mate­ri­als sup­plied via intranet
  • Set stan­dards and pro­cured soft­ware and hardware
  • Installed and con­fig­ured work­sta­tion and LAN soft­ware and hard­ware (mixed Win95 and Win­NT envi­ron­ment, with some Solaris servers)
  • Pri­ma­ry con­tact for T1 provider (BBN­Plan­et)

Technical Writer/Technical Support Supervisor, MindSpring Enterprises, Inc. — 1995 to 1996

Hired as a Tele­phone Sup­port Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for ISP in August 1995; pro­mot­ed to Super­vi­sor in Octo­ber 1995; and pro­mot­ed to addi­tion­al duties as Tech­ni­cal Writer in Jan­u­ary 1996.

  • Researched and devel­oped writ­ten train­ing and ref­er­ence resources for cus­tomers and tech­ni­cians, deliv­ered in both tra­di­tion­al print­ed and online (email, news­group and web) formats
  • Involved in devel­op­ment of exten­sive knowl­edge data­base for intranet.
  • Test­ed new ver­sions of soft­ware pack­age for Win­dows users, track­ing defects and work­ing with devel­op­ers to resolve problems
  • Test­ed web-based appli­ca­tions devel­oped inter­nal­ly for use by sup­port personnel
  • Pro­vid­ed sup­port via phone, email and news­groups for any issue on Mac­in­tosh or Win­dows com­put­ers that could impact use of the cus­tomer’s Mind­Spring account
  • Supervised/mentored tech­ni­cians and assist­ed in recruit­ing and train­ing new technicians

Pre-tech Years — 1985 to 1992

Before I moved into tech, I did account­ing and admin­is­tra­tive work. My last employ­er was Mis­sion to the World, the for­eign mis­sions board of the Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Amer­i­ca. I admin­is­tered their self-insured health insur­ance fund from 1987 to 1992, pro­cess­ing claims, sub­mit­ting claims to the stop-loss insur­er, doing all the account­ing, and main­tain­ing oth­er records. I reg­u­lar­ly ran ben­e­fit ori­en­ta­tion and enroll­ment ses­sions for 50 or more mis­sion­ar­ies. (There were usu­al­ly 400+ fam­i­lies enrolled in the plan.) I was also involved in a project to devel­op soft­ware to keep the fund’s records and inter­face with the orga­ni­za­tion’s account­ing soft­ware. I col­lab­o­rat­ed on that project with an out­side devel­op­er and MTW’s IT direc­tor. From 1990 to 1992, I worked remotely.

Volunteer Experience

Technology Coach, Bluehair Technology — 2014 to 2017

Helped seniors learn to use their mobile devices and oth­er tech­nol­o­gy, as well as with under­stand­ing Face­book and oth­er social net­works, Inter­net safe­ty, using online bank­ing or ride hail­ing ser­vices, and so on. Also updat­ed Word­Press site and Face­book group with events as needed.

Mentor, Do Space — 2016

Assist­ed clients of tech­nol­o­gy library to learn or improve tech­nol­o­gy skills in one-on-one sessions.

Animal Foster Home, LifeLine Animal Project — 2013 to 2016

  • Pro­vid­ed a lov­ing home to cats who would oth­er­wise live in the shelter
  • Helped pre­pare kit­tens for their for­ev­er homes by social­iz­ing them, giv­ing them plen­ty of love, and get­ting them used to being han­dled gently

IT Advisor to Board of Directors, Grants to You — 2012 to 2014

Liai­son to web­mas­ter and web host. Respon­si­ble for iden­ti­fy­ing issues with web­site, report­ing them to web­mas­ter and track­ing them until resolved. Assist­ed in recruit­ing new web­mas­ter. Also mem­ber of New Busi­ness Mod­el Committee.

Executive Vice President/Webmaster, Working to Halt Online Abuse — 1998 to 2005

WHOA assist­ed peo­ple who were being harassed online and worked to increase aware­ness of inter­net safe­ty issues in the gen­er­al pub­lic and among law enforce­ment per­son­nel and legislators.

  • Served on the Board of Direc­tors. Helped cre­ate poli­cies and pro­ce­dures for the organization
  • Ana­lyzed sta­tis­tics col­lect­ed from cas­es for 2000 and 2001 and cre­ate annu­al reports based on them
  • Fea­tured as an Inter­net Secu­ri­ty expert dur­ing inter­views with 20/20 Down­town, Oprah, The Net, WSB News, .Net, The Site, USA Today, US News & World Report, AP, and oth­er tele­vised and print media
  • Devel­oped and main­tained web­site at haltabuse.org (cre­at­ed the design and wrote most of the con­tent that was on the site at that time)
  • Con­sult­ed with law enforce­ment per­son­nel on spe­cif­ic cas­es and trained them to trace mes­sages themselves
  • As an Inter­net Safe­ty Advo­cate (1998 to 2000), worked with peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing harass­ment, traced email and news­groups mes­sages and locat­ed the email or web source to whom to com­plain and con­tact­ed those par­ties on the vic­tims’ behalf when appropriate
  • Advised the vic­tims on how to avoid fur­ther harass­ment as much as possible

Safety Coordinator, Freecycle Network — 2004 to 2005

Freecy­cle is a net­work of local groups bring­ing peo­ple with still-use­ful items to get rid of togeth­er with neigh­bors who need or want those items. The net­work keeps many tons of usable goods out of land­fills all over the world.

  • Began vol­un­teer­ing with Freecy­cle as a local lis­town­er in 2004, then became the first New Group Approver for Geor­gia before mov­ing on to the Safe­ty Coor­di­na­tor posi­tion, which was cre­at­ed for me
  • Devel­oped safe­ty poli­cies and assist­ed Freecy­cle per­son­nel with any prob­lems that arose
  • Served on Advi­so­ry Board to Pres­i­dent with oth­er leaders

Troop Leader, Girl Scouts of the USA — 2001 to 2003

Co-leader of Rain­bow troop, girls from about 5 up to late teens. Planned and facil­i­tat­ed meet­ings and troop events (with help from teens), with age-appro­pri­ate activ­i­ties for each level.

Tech Live Advisor and Homework Help-room Volunteer, America Online — 1993 to 1995

Answered ques­tions and edu­cat­ed mem­bers about AOL and the Inter­net in gen­er­al, chat­ting with up to five users at a time in exchange for a free AOL account. Assist­ed ele­men­tary to col­lege stu­dents with sub­ject-spe­cif­ic and gen­er­al questions.

President, PC Users Group of Dublin/Laurens County — 1990 to 1992

One of the founders and the first pres­i­dent of a PC Users Group in Mid­dle Geor­gia. Led the group from three ini­tial founders to 50+ mem­bers. Arranged month­ly pre­sen­ta­tions on top­ics of inter­est to mem­bers and set up spe­cial inter­est groups on top­ics like Win­dows, Data­bas­es, BBS­ing, and Programming.

Education

Cur­rent­ly enrolled at West­ern Gov­er­nors Uni­ver­si­ty major­ing in Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy with a Soft­ware Devel­op­ment con­cen­tra­tion. Approx­i­mate­ly two years of cred­its towards a B.S. in Tech­ni­cal and Pro­fes­sion­al Communications/Management from Devry Uni­ver­si­ty, South­ern Poly­tech­nic State Uni­ver­si­ty, Mer­cer Uni­ver­si­ty, and Agnes Scott Col­lege. Con­tin­u­ing to uti­lize RMOTR, FreeCode­Camp, Codecad­e­my, LinkedIn Learn­ing, Cours­era, EdX, Babbel, and oth­er resources to con­tin­ue education.