Born and raised in Minnesota, I graduated from St. John's University in Collegeville, MN with a B.A. in Communication in 1999.
I started my professional career as an Account Coordinator for eWatch, a web media monitoring company that was purchased by PR Newswire. In the spring of 2004, I transferred to the Los Angeles office of PR Newswire where I worked as an editor, proofreading press releases for Fortune 500 companies.
While in Los Angeles, I suffered a bought of writer's block after 6 years of working on various projects. This lead to me purchasing a point and shoot camera and taking long walks around Hollywood which blossomed into a serious interest in photography.
Around this time Flickr and other social media sites were popping up. I quickly joined and began network with fellow photographers around the world. In the fall of 2006, I started working for Variety Magazine as a Sales Analyst. In this position, I was responsible for lead generation as well as internet research for the sales team.
In September of 2007, I founded La Pura Vida, an online photography gallery that showcases monthly curated shows from contributors around the globe. In addition, I run the daily blog that showcases photography from around the web, industry news and other tidbits. Since our inception, we've gained a dedicated following in the online photography community and have been early adopters in the use of social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and RSS feeds to distribute and promote our content.
In the summer of 2007, I decided to leave my job at Variety and spend some time photographing and working on building La Pura Vida. It was during these travels that I decided I wanted to fulfill a long term desire to live in New York City.
In the spring of 2009, I started working in sales and marketing for LED Waves, a Brooklyn based industry leader in LED lighting products. During my time, I've successfully integrated Twitter into the marketing strategy, have built lead lists through internet research and developed a growing client list.
I continue to photograph and have several new projects in the pipeline. If you're interested collaborating, please don't hesitate to contact me.