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Gettin’ my street smarts.
As an advocate for art + technology, Carolyn Parker is a recognized expert in all phases of creative direction, development, and technical production.
I'm goin' home. Folks back home can get mighty persuasive, so we made the trek once more to my husband's home town in eastern Kentucky (Flatwoods, right outside of Ashland). Although we were finally close to some family, after a couple of years in a severely depressed economy, though, we realized we missed the warmth of the west coast and decided to move to Phoenix to be closer to my father, who lived in Peoria, right outside of Sun City, Arizona.
I spent almost 20 years in Arizona, working primarily at Motorola in the Space and Systems Group in Scottsdale. The group went through several name changes with varying degrees of focus in various government and vertical markets. I provided art direction and design for the Hayden and Roosevelt campuses, as well as for the home office, based in Schaumberg, Illinois. In 2001, our group was purchased by General Dynamics and the focus turned to command and control, communications networking, computing and information assurance for defense, government and select commercial customers in the United States and abroad.
Things gettin' heavy in Phoenix. My father passed away, I was now divorced, General Dynamics offered me a different assignment which I did not choose to pursue (Regrets? I've had a few...), and once again, I needed a change in scenery. My new partner and I moved to Beaverton, Oregon, where I found work with the state, although it didn't last but six months. Program Tech II / Communications Specialist / Webmaster for Oregon Parks and Recreation, before the content management system got ahold of it. The state's economy was treacherous. The politics were treacherous. The commute to Salem was treacherous.
I reached out to my hometown again, Cincinnati and, this time, was blessed to receive an offer as an experienced hire at Procter & Gamble. I was on fire! My incoming assignment was within the Human Resources function, as Visual Communications Design Manager. It was a great experience and it exposed me to the best of the best. This position required that I manage and provide strategic business transformation versus tactics ... not "doing the work." P&G expects a lot out of you, including the requirement that you continually increase your circle of influence. Since I wanted to learn more about consumer relationship marketing, I found an opportunity in an emerging, upstream group within Consumer Solutions, called the iMPower Group. As the sixth Digital Marketing Production Manager within this emerging Agile group, I provided expertise and gained lots of experience with Personal Health Care brands (Prilosec OTC, Metamucil, Fibersure (now Metamucil), PUR, and Pet Health Care brands (Iams and Eukanuba). We even got to go to Warsaw, Poland in 2008, for the annual summit meeting. I managed external relations with agencies, including Bridge Worldwide, imc2 and third-party vendors to support digital marketing services, such as email marketing, couponing, sampling, sweeps, contests, the emerging eRetail scene, search, and various technical standards, including hosting. Another major responsibility was leading the standardization and scalability of analytics and metrics and I championed the development and presentation to business stakeholders of a customer conversion funnel + scorecard approach.
As part of my personal growth strategy, I decided to leave my catbird seat, and found a promising opportunity at Cengage Learning (formerly Thomson Learning) as Web Designer and Developer, creating user interface prototypes for virtually all their corporate and business groups, including eCommerce platforms, SharePoint sites, and external branding guidelines. I also participated in the iChapters annual usability summit in Belmont, California, providing rapid prototyping and heuristics studies, which was a brand-new experience for me.
Turn the beat around. Within six months, though, my job at Cengage Learning was eliminated due to corporate restructuring. Being the resourceful person that I am, I cast my net wide and far, and this time, chose Las Vegas (warm, sunny, new), and was welcomed into a great gig at R&R Partners as Senior Interactive Producer. The best interactive experience yet, and I managed a great project, Vegas Bound for my primary client, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. In April 2009, Vegas tourism and R&R Partners experienced increasingly more challenging financial difficulties and, with the economy being so gloomy, R&R tightened their belt.
And that brings me back to Cincinnati, where I am finally taking the required time to become an Emerging Small Business, while focusing on integrating art + technology. Since I arrived, I've consulted with Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions and Go ZapIT Interactive. And I've acquired a couple of new clients: Nancy Rexroth, master photographer of the toy camera genre (stay tuned for upcoming site launch!), and Amitayus Leadership.
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