I discovered my passion for web design in 1996. It was primarily thanks to a book called: “What Color is Your Parachute?” This book talked about how to switch careers and how to find one that was best suited to you.
I was reading it because I was out of work and soon to be a new mother. My bookstore failed, but I found opportunity in the things that people continued to ask me to do. When I had my bookstore, people asked me who did my business cards, who did my flyers, who did my ads — the answer to all three was: me. People continued to seek me out for my graphic services towards the end of my retail business and beyond.
I thought I’d make a great graphic artist since everyone liked what I did so much. But there were obstacles in my path, I didn’t have an education in Graphic Art, nor the money or time to go to school. I needed to earn a living and earn one fast. At that time, there was this relatively new thing called “The Internet” that did not require a degree, just the ability to show that you knew your stuff. I figured this would be just the thing for me. It had the visual aspects that I had previously shown I had a talent for as well as a technical aspect.
Once I started learning HTML 4 I was hooked. A friend of mine gave me Photoshop and I progressed even further.
The road to becoming a web professional still took a long time, but I was able to do clerical work while I honed my skills in web design. In 1999 I got my first break with Strouds — The Linen Experts and became their webmaster. A few years later, not long before Strouds closed its doors, I moved to San Diego.
After some time away from being a full-time web professional, I finally had the means to go to school and earn a degree. I knew that I would need additional learning in order to meet the demands of the current job market and in 2010 I completed my Bachelor of Science in Web Design and Interactive Media from the Art Institute of California San Diego. I went to work for Sony Online Entertainment as a Marketing Artist, due to my graphic art skills in branding and my web skills in Flash and ActionScript.
In January of 2013 I started teaching Flash and ActionScript at Platt. The flash class changed to become the Responsive Web Design class in October that year and I have been teaching this class ever since. Since then I have also taught JavaScript at USD’s ASAP (a summer camp for teens), JavaScript I at UCSD Extension and began teaching Scripting for the Web and Programming for Designers at Platt in 2015.