My Bio

With more than 20 years experience in the workforce, I began my career in the United States Marine Corps where I served from early 1990 to late 1996. I was honorably discharged and am a distinguished Armed Forces Services Veteran holding two Armed Forces Services Medals for participation in Operation Provide Promise and Operation Deny Flight. I also was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, a Navy Unit Citation, the National Defense Service Medal, a Good Conduct Medal, Overseas Service Medal and other various awards and citations.

I completed my military service and worked 4 years in the manufacturing industry for Navistar International while attending Indiana University part-time to complete a B.A. in both English and Philosophy. During my undergraduate education, I also worked 2 years in journalism as a photo editor and staff writer for the campus newspaper honing my writing skills and pursuing a passion for reporting and publishing. To this day, I am still an avid writer and photographer continuing to sharpen my skills.

After receiving my B.A. (May, 2004), I was accepted to and attended the Indiana University School of Library Science program obtaining a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science (December, 2006). During my graduate education, I began teaching for the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts as a writing instructor in face-to-face courses and also began work in online instruction and distance education teaching Shakespeare and literary analysis for the program. My teaching experience eventually led to his position with the SLIS graduate program where I instructed for the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University. I now instruct a course in knowledge management at the Dominican University Graduate School of Library Science.

Upon completing my first graduate degree in 2006, I took a position with Columbus Regional Hospital (Columbus, Indiana) as a Medical Librarian where I quickly began rounding with healthcare personnel, physicians and nurses participating in research committees and providing support for evidence-based medicine. Through diligence and perseverance, I was able to convince the organization that today’s idea of a medical librarian was antiquated and in need of significant revision. This initiated a change in the title and duties of the position to “Information & Knowledge Specialist.” In addition, I was able to conduct a formal needs assessment and essentially virtualized the organization’s knowledge resources effectively moving a number of them to the cloud and providing access to organizational resources both on and off campus. It was during this period (and as an intern during my graduate education) that I began working in the field of Information Architecture and User Experience Design as these fields were growing with the advent of the Internet. I left my position at Columbus in the Fall of 2008 for a research position with the Regenstrief Institute. It was during this year I also began working on a second graduate degree with the IU School of Informatics specializing, initially, in Human-Computer Interaction.

I worked with the Regenstrief Institute in the field of informatics for nearly three years and was promoted to an information management position just after my first year. During my tenure at the institute, I worked on multiple federally funded projects leading efforts on a number of them. My projects included work with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to reduce MRSA infections and Hospital Acquired Infections through implementation science and knowledge management efforts, web and interface design projects to collect and organize data for studies and grants, work on the design and implementation of electronic health records, HIPAA and legal regulation efforts in electronic health records as well as the acquisition and management of CMS data for analysis in aging and Alzheimer’s studies. I have been published in a number of journals for work completed during this period of time. I also completed my second Master’s Degree in Informatics during this time period specializing in the human factors elements of the electronic health record to include several large studies.

Most recently, I spent 15 months working on various design projects in healthcare as a Chicago-based consultant. During the first 7 months, I worked as the Associate Director of Information Architecture at the Alzheimer’s Association where I conducted data analysis and led efforts to revise the organizational intranet, association portal and improve search engine optimization (SEO). In the latter 8 months of my work in Chicago, I worked as a UX Architect on the design and interface for a new electronic health record system for Amedisys Home Healthcare. This was a national effort involving the needs analysis and development of multiple interfaces to be used in testing prior to the development and deployment of a national record system for the organization.