About Me

Hello! I am a self-taught WordPress web designer who specializes in meeting nonprofit needs.

I have a passion for helping nonprofits through my work. I enjoy helping nonprofits realize their outreach potential through tech. I have years of experience as a technical instructor. I can run trainings about Google Drive, Google Analytics, page editing basics, and more. People call me a tech jargon “translator."

Nonprofit Work

I have involved myself with nonprofit work since I was a teenager. I interned for the Del Norte chapter of the Building Healthy Communities (BHC) initiative. I participated in cohort discussions with the California Endowment Program. While interning with the Wild Rivers Community Foundation, I helped fund local nonprofits. I've also:

  • Helped run the Youth Training Academy in Crescent City, CA as a Youth Mentor for multiple years. The YTA was a summer-long initiative to teach valuable job skills to middle and high school students. I planned curriculum, led classes, and invited repreentatives of local art and tech industries to lead discussions and workshops. I helped groups of students connect with community partners to develop, enact, and present their summer projects.
  • Initially designed the website for, and help launch, the youth-led media website Redwood Voice (the site's design has since changed).
  • Volunteered at Coastal Connections, a youth center in Crescent City, CA.
    Lobbied for local, youth and LGBTQI+ interests with California representatives.
  • Helped run summer training programs for middle school and high school aged youth.
  • Served as a board member with the 1st Phoenix Community Center in Phoenix, OR

The Community Website Partnership

(formerly: Community Website Project; CWP for short)

Technical Specialist from 2016 to Aug 2023; Work on contract basis Aug 2023 onward

It all started while I was attending a bus tour in Curry County for The Ford Family Foundation. I felt some anxiety from being so close to so many people. The person next to me noticed I was tensing up and struck a conversation to help calm me down. Her name is Mary Ward, and she's one of my favorite people. She has decades of experience with community building work. The result of our conversations is the Community Website Project.

We started with Curry County by developing Wild Rivers Connect, then moved outward. Eventually we became a registered 501c(3), changed our name to the Community Website Partnership, and found even more amazing communities to work with.

CWP works with networks of nonprofits, businesses, city and local governments in rural areas of Oregon to create online information hubs. The main goal of these websites is to make it easier for nonprofits to share information about what they're doing with the greater community, and for people to have easier access to knowledge about services, events, and ways to volunteer. You can view a sample site here.

Nonprofits and businesses can post events and list themselves in the directory, or post volunteer opportunities. We make it easier for community members to submit press releases to newspapers/radio/TV via our Submit Your Stories form. We've worked with regions like Josephine County, Douglas County, Sisters County and the Applegate.

I developed and enhanced these websites based on years of feedback from nonprofits and rural residents - from adding a way for people to post volunteer opportunities, to English-to-Spanish Translation.

Creating a community website involves a five step process (more info here), and I supported the technical side of that:

  1. Participating in discussions with community stakeholders about creating the website, answering preliminary questions, and touring what their website might look once it's implemented. Helping them choose a domain (and sometimes explaining what a domain is).
  2. From these stakeholder meetings, a team forms that is dedicated to developing content; contacting press organizations and letting them know about the press release form; putting together a list of organizations and businesses to invite, putting together social media accounts; etc.
  3. I worked with the local content team to create a version of our template website that is customized to how the community wants to represent themselves, what services they want to focus on, and what they want to say. Then the website launches.
  4. From there, I trained people who want to moderate their website on everything from basic content editing to gathering Google analytics data. Each training includes a video and written guide. I made sure plugins were up to date, spam was removed, ongoing licenses were tracked. I provided ongoing support via a ticketing system I also set up.

Training was a big part of my work, and something I'm proud to have learned on-the-go. I've been blessed with the opportunity to help someone go from not being very tech savvy to moderating community calendars and even helping other people learn how to use these websites.

We worked with other nonprofits, too. I trained the Four Way Community Foundation on how to use Google Drive. In late 2022 I helped the Southern Oregon Pachamama Alliance run a multi-week Water Summit through Zoom. Each event had 80-100 attendees who represented nonprofits throuhout the region. I helped the team adjust their summit plans so they fit in a virtual environment, and supported the meetings by creating breakout rooms, playing slides and video, and featuring presenters. At a few points there was even live music!

I'm so incredibly proud of the amazing community members I worked with, and how much they've grown. Being a small part of their success is something that drives me.

These sites and networks have had a noticeable impact in their communities. During the fire season a few years back they were an important place to find up-to-date emergency and disaster relief info. In the Illinois Valley, students use their site to find volunteer work for college applications.