Where are you located, and what is your favorite thing about it?
I’m in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. My favorite thing about where I live is how lushly green it is here for most of the year. The valley has nutrient-dense soil from Ice Age floods. This fertility makes it easy to grow many different types of plants, which gives us amazing fruits and vegetables that I love to cook and eat.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
I spend a lot of time in my garden growing flowers (mostly bearded irises) and edible crops like blueberries. I’m an uncle and love to take care of my nieces and nephew. My two long-haired dachshunds follow me like my shadow. I usually carry a camera and take a lot of nature and landscape photos. And read novels, mostly in the medieval fantasy genre.
Have any bucket list items?
I want to take my mom to the Cotswolds in England. We are both obsessed with Downton Abbey, Bridgerton, and Princess Diana, so it seems like a natural destination.
What’s your passion project?
I enjoy portrait photography and capturing different chapters of people’s lives and special moments. I started pursuing portraiture when I was 14 and still find something new to learn and try out with each location and person I work with.
I’m also a part of my county’s Master Gardener program. It continues to be a meaningful way to get involved with my local community by encouraging others to garden for community building, therapeutic benefits (like relaxation and stress relief), and food security. I encourage anyone interested to look into their county’s application process.
Why did you pick Mad Fish Digital?
I picked Mad Fish Digital because I felt a strong sense of camaraderie in looking out for each other, our communities, and the clients we work with. I’m extremely happy to work for an agency that actively prioritizes and works toward improving impact beyond a balance sheet.
What is your favorite genre of music to listen to while you work?
This is a hard question! I listen to a broad range of music. One minute I’ll be listening to country/folk like Dolly Parton, First Aid Kit, Fleet Foxes, and Kacey Musgraves, and the next it will be hyper-pop like Kim Petras, Rebecca Black, Dorian Electra, Charli-XCX, and Slayyyter, or bands I’ve loved forever like Turnover, The Story So Far, and Armor For Sleep.
Share a fun fact about yourself!
I took my first web design and development class on Dreamweaver when I was 10 😎
If you have a pet, tell us about them.
My two long-haired dachshunds’ names are Ouiser Pawdreaux and Truvy Bones. Their names are Steel Magnolias character references. Ouiser is 5 with a dapple coat that is uniquely all silver/gray with black markings. Truvy is almost 2 with a red coat.
I’m lucky that they both like water because it is rather rare for dachshunds. We go swimming in rivers and lakes during the summer, and they both go paddleboarding with me, which is a lot of fun. They love going camping and playing fetch in the garden, where they have made tunnels through the wildflower foliage.
What do you add to the team outside of work?
I’m infinitely curious, which has made me a lifelong learner. I love learning about anything and everything. Lately, I’ve been studying horticulture, permaculture on a residential scale, and nutrition in relation to the standard American diet.
I also love history and anthropology because it’s interesting to look at how quickly life has changed. From a communications perspective, the first transatlantic cable message took over 16 hours to transmit in 1858. Less than 200 years later, we can nearly instantly transmit large amounts of data, broadcast video, and even video chat with each other across most parts of the world.
That isn’t much time at all on the scale of human history, which makes it fascinating to look at how people lived for most of history compared to the last two centuries. Nearly every facet of life was impacted by rapid technological advancements, while our brains usually take much longer to adapt to change, which is interesting to consider in the realm of marketing.
