Communication and Collaboration

Communication and collaboration have been overarching themes throughout my career. My first college degree was a bachelor of journalism in broadcast journalism followed by a bachelor of science in atmospheric and oceanic science. My desire at that time was to work as a TV reporter and meteorologist which I had the opportunity to do at 3 stations in the Midwest. I chose journalism in part because the focus of the work is on learning new things and sharing them with others (lifelong learning for the win!) While I moved out of these fields professionally, the lessons I learned working in them have continued to help me. And the people I met as a journalism student and broadcast journalist continue to inspire me. Two people in particular are highly involved in accessibility efforts. One specializes in virtual and social media accessibility and the other is both a consultant in that realm and an ardent supporter of accessibility and representation of people with disabilities broadly.

Their work has inspired me to seek out new resources in order to make my work more accessible and the emerging technology MOOC provided a great opportunity to explore more tools and resources related to this topic. As I worked through the EmTechWiki resources, I found new information (which I shared right away through my social media accounts) but was surprised to find some important topics not represented such as using alt text. I continued to update the DEIAA Resources page on this site and will later add these tools into the wiki database. I also serendipitously encountered a page on social justice that provided names of leaders in that field who I reached out to for a webinar I'm helping to coordinate on leading difficult conversations with youth about stereotypes and bias in STEM. I continue to be delighted by the opportunities digging into these resources provide for the myriad of seemingly disparate projects I'm currently involved with. Others may struggle to see the overlaps but I love having the change to weave together resources from across different fields.  

Memories from my TV days, in this case WXOW in the Lacrosse, WI area.