Writing has always been a part of my professional life.

🦠🦠 As an epidemiologist, I wrote state-level reports about my analysis of diabetes and evaluations efforts across West Virginia.

📊 As a data analyst and graduate student, I authored reports on maternal health, one of which was accepted into the Journal of Epidemiology.

📈📉 As a business analyst, I edited technical manuals to address user needs and created guides for new products.

I have written a report on how to run an accessibility check for a website, developed data usability documentation for analysts, and now as a UX researcher I regularly develop read-outs and reports.

In none of these positions was I technically a writer, and by no means was I “technical writer.” However, as you can tell, writing clearly holds a lot of value in the professional world. The communication of technical concepts plays is a huge part of anything related to tech, science, data, etc.

Below are examples of my work as I learn about Technical Communication in a more formal setting, an MA program at Carnegie Mellon University.

Click into the image to the right for full access.

This article, while written and published long ago, played a pivotal role in my writing career. As a public health graduate student, I was accustomed to reading scientific articles as part of my own classwork.

This was the first time, however, I came to appreciate the work that goes into developing such a published article, and writing in general. My graduate courses paled in comparison to the rigor required: the analysis, the appropriate location of information, formatting, the many edits and rewrites.

The process led me to better understand the genre of scientific/technical articles, in general and my own writing style.

This is a short poem about my five-year-old hound dog, Carolína - a darling little girl who owns my heart. If ever your hands fall below your waist in my home, they will come across a wet nose and two brown eyes staring up into yours. A stinky girl, the best girl, ever.

This small project was completed in InDesign. I enjoyed playing around with typography and leaned on Thinking with Type when considering my type pairings and sizes.

“YC Monthly” is a 4-part mountain bike race series which takes place from March to August, in rural Pennsylvania. It’s entirely volunteer run, with a small-town, grassroots feel.

As a mountain biker, racer, volunteer, and designer of services, I noticed a bottleneck at race registration with the completion of our registration forms: sometimes racers (and even volunteers) had a problem understanding how to fill it out.

In the Figma to the left, are the original and the final forms. I focused on making clear the purpose of the form, combining subject matter information that was the same, and asking for legibility.

The use of color was reduced to only those racers will see on the race course based on their category sign-up.

The typography was modernized and a logo was added.