My first job out of college, in 2000, was at a Pittsburgh startup called iKnowthat.com, whose mission was to create a trackable, online learning environment for children. It was on that job that I learned Flash and had my first exposure to the nuts-and-bolts production animation. I began as an illustrator -- creating informational graphics and vector-based backgrounds for animations -- and then began doing animation as well. After the great dot com collapse of 2001, the entire art department was laid off in January 2002.

Also in Jan 2002, a friend asked me to design video projections for her dance adaptation of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis." I threw myself into the project -- my first foray into video projection -- and the results remain some of the work I'm most proud of. I went on to work with that friend, choreographer Adelka Polak, on a piece called "Vernisaz" the following year.

In 2003, I was hired as an e-learning designer for Catalyst Connection, a project of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. I was part of a project whose mission was to go into local manufacturing facilities, and capture and digitize the knowledge that existed there, much of which had never been written down. I had the good fortune to be able to tour facilities that created pleated buff wheels (used for buffing everything from hospital floors to the exteriors of airplanes), ball bearings, and medical respiration aids. The Catalyst Connection team, including myself left the Pittsburgh Technology Council in 2004 and became Technical Learning Consultants.

In 2004 I moved to NYC and got a job at a boutique marketing and communications company called Learning Worlds. I created demos and promos -- all of which were for internal communications -- for large technology companies like SAP, Epson and Microsoft. Because of the economic collapse in 2006-2008, however, all of Learning Worlds' clients at that time put a freeze on hiring outside contractors, and work dried up. Most of the staff (myself included) was laid off in 2009.

Since then, I have enjoyed a rich and varied career as a freelance designer. I have created infographics and Flash animations for UNICEF, done web design for the non-profit Peace Dividend Trust, designed video projections for numerous downtown theatrical productions, worked as a storyboard artist, motion graphics designer and compositor for a series of Exxon-Mobil commercials, made Flash banner ads for Cadillac and Sprint, visualized a revitalization project for the city of Baltimore, interned at a greenscreen video production facility to gain more experience in video post-production, and created a series of 8 animations for German chemical corporation BASF.