Storytelling has always been a passion of mine. I’ve always loved seeing how people went about telling stories as well as the subjects their stories were always about. And then I loved the challenge of trying to do that myself.
It started at a pretty young age. I spent every morning from fifth grade through high school reading The Star-Telegram, and I read writers like Randy Galloway and Jim Reeves. I loved the information they provided and, more importantly, the stories that they told.
And I pursued that same passion when I went to the University of Texas at Austin. There I worked for The Daily Texan, telling the stories of the various sports teams, including men’s basketball, baseball, softball and volleyball. I told the stories of players trying to make their way through their sport, a coach who went from not knowing anything about volleyball to building a high school powerhouse, to a game-winning shot in the NCAA tournament to end Texas’ season.
In the summer of 2016, I capped it all off by being one of four UT students/recent alumni to travel to Rio de Janeiro to cover the 2016 Summer Olympics. I told the story of a diver having to battle crazy weather conditions, of a weightlifter who came back from a suspension to take the bronze medal, of the first U.S. medalist in the 3,500 meter men’s steeplechase since 1984 and the rise and celebration of Brazil’s men’s soccer gold.
And then I discovered a new way to tell stories: through a website. After learning the basics of CSS, HTML, JavaScript, PHP and SQL, I began developing WordPress plugins and themes. I loved being able to use code to create things on the screen that people could interact with. And I loved finding the ways in which the website could help enhance any story.
That landed me a job as a developer at a small web development company called Faith Growth. Here I helped build websites for churches so that they could tell their stories online. Whether it was building a completely custom website, or just taking a pre built WordPress theme and changing the colors to match their scheme, we focused on making sure they could be found online.
Currently, I work at the University of North Texas Health Science Center on the web team, helping the faculty, students and university share their stories online for the world.
But I also continue to work with small businesses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, especially in my hometown of Mansfield. I love small businesses and their stories of beginning and helping out their customers.
As the world continues to shift online more and more each year, I want to help small businesses take that leap and create a strong online presence. Whether it’s creating a website for them at an affordable price, creating the website of their dreams, helping them manage and maintain their website or even just helping them learn more about how websites and digital marketing work together to grow their business.
Living in a growing but still semi small town-ish feel place, I’ve fallen in love with small businesses and what they provide to the community. I love to help them move forward into this digital world and find new ways to grow their business online.
Storytelling will always be a passion of mine. No matter the medium — a website, a text story, a photo story or video story — remains one of the driving forces for me. There’s nothing better than finishing a story and being able to share it with the subject and the world.