A short
take on yours truly
Beginnings
I grew up in Lewisdale, a downmarket Washington suburb
with no claims to fame other than proximity to College
Park, home of the University of Maryland. The year I was to begin
kindergarten, the elementary school in my neighborhood
had reached capacity. So I went to school in University
Park, a comfortable town that seemed worlds apart from
Lewisdale. I couldn't have asked for a better elementary
school—for a public school outside Washington, it
had excellent facilities and some of the most outstanding
teachers you'd ever meet.
When I was 10, we moved to Cherry Hill, New Jersey. After
several years in suburbia attending Cherry Hill High School East, I went to college at the University
of Pennsylvania,
where I studied anthropology, fine arts, and psychology.
After graduating, I worked at Marcel Dekker and United Media. On a whim (or rather, at my parents'
urging), I applied to business school and was accepted. I
thought I'd had enough of Penn after four years, but
apparently not: Back I went, to Wharton, for another two.
I majored in e-commerce (laugh all you want to; it was
the "in" thing back then) and interned at Windowbox.com (a dot-com that is still around). The
startup bug had bitten me, so my first post-graduation
gig was at TheSquare.com. When the company began its slow
death spiral, I jumped ship and came to Jungle Media Group, publisher of MBA Jungle and JD Jungle, where I serve as senior director, online
content.
The Company I Keep
The people in my life hail from all over the world, and some are always online. Sports reporter Jane Havsy was my first friend at Penn. Freelance journalist Sascha Segan has lived all over the place but has chosen Astoria, Queens, as his latest perch. Irish musician Barbara Gogan has just released her latest CD, Wheels. My oddball e-penpal Shashank Tripathi is from India but works in Japan.
Interests
My hobbies are rather eclectic. I've been drawing and
painting for as long as I can remember; this avocation
eventually turned into more of a commercial endeavor, as
I started to design and sell pressed-flower greeting
cards and gift items at specialty shops such as Borders
Books and the Pierpont Morgan Library Shop.
I'm also interested in interior design, and weekends
often find me curled up on my futon paging through a
shelter magazine in search of inspiration for my next
project. My penchant for interiors, however, is not
particularly materialistic; I believe that space, like
prose, benefits from judicious editing, and I would much
rather live with a few well-chosen, necessary objects
than an array of tchotchkes.
Learning new computer "stuff" is also something
I like doing in my spare time; I'm just beginning to
wiggle my toes in the vast waters of JavaScript, CSS, etc.
One of my favorite "cool things" on the Web:
The U.K.-based Guardian's Java-enabled online crossword puzzles. If you haven't seen them, you're
missing out.
Press from the Past
Turn heads, make headlines. Or at least get mentioned in the press...
How to Pitch to MBA Jungle, mediabistro.com
Dot-Calming Down, abcnews.com
More Movers and Shakers, atnewyork.com
My pressed-flower greeting cards were mentioned on this Japanese site several years ago -- complete with a picture of one of my cards.
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