Last fall, my husband and I quit our jobs (!!) and took off for a seven-month overseas adventure in New Zealand, Australia and Southeast Asia. We kept in touch with family and friends via email newsletter; you can view the archives here.

Along the way and since returning to the U.S., I’ve started to test the waters with freelance outdoors writing. Here are a couple of clips from the past several months; more to come soon.

My most recent full-time gig was working as an editor, web producer and reporter at The Seattle Times. In 2013, the paper hired me as the first community engagement editor for Education Lab, a solutions-focused journalism initiative that seeks to change the conversation surrounding public education in Washington state.

In this role, I managed the project’s web presence while building a highly engaged digital audience from scratch. I wrote and edited blog posts, I produced video Q&As with local educators and U.S. senators, and I learned how to stay (mostly) sane while organizing community events with hundreds of people.

In 2015, I branched out from Education Lab to apply those same community engagement skills to the Opinion pages at The Times. I helped re-imagine the letters to the editor and op-ed sections by soliciting reader input online and using social media as a tool to connect readers with Times journalists. Two of the projects that meant the most to me were starting a weekly guest essay series called My Take and producing a video Q&A with local youth who had experienced homelessness.

I spent my last year at The Times dramatically growing the audience for the Education Lab newsletter while also launching and writing a new seasonal newsletter called Outside Guide. I wrote several outdoors stories during this time, including a Sunday magazine feature about how the region’s top female alpinists balance motherhood with their passion for the outdoors.

Prior to The Seattle Times, I worked as a reporter and editor for Patch, AOL’s hyperlocal news organization. I ran the site for Redmond, Washington, and wrote about everything from Tim Eyman and red light cameras to the first gay-marriage licenses issued in King County.

My first jobs out of college were reporting and copy-editing gigs at various newspapers on the East Coast. You can view my full resume here and a sampling of clips here.