True to my mercurial nature, I've held a number of very different jobs over the years, none more than tangentially related to any of my majors in college. The first job I took was as assistant to the director of psychopharmacology at the Harvard Medical School --basically a clerical worker/research assistant. Though I liked my co-workers, I wasn't particularly fond of the work, and stayed there only a year.

My second job was an administrative/office manager position at the Community Therapeutic Day School in Brookline, Mass. (it has since moved to the site of a former dairy farm in Lexington, Mass.), a small private school for emotionally disturbed children. In many ways, that was an incredible experience. The pay was dismal, not even enough to live on as my rent and food expenses exceeded my salary (so I depleted my savings and eventually needed to leave), but my co-workers were like family. We spent almost all our time together, in and out of work, and the atmosphere was loving and supportive. It was also here that I really got hooked on the Macintosh. While I had played off and on with a Macintosh the year after I graduated (they were only introduced to the public the year of my graduation... with the famous "1984" Apple commercial, inspired by George Orwell's book of the same name, directed by Ridley Scott, and considered by TV Guide the "greatest commercial of all time"), I didn't have full-time access to one until this job. I ran the school's office on a 128k Mac, which had no hard drive and only one floppy drive for the first year. Sitting now at my 1GHz PIII with 256Mb of RAM, an 80Gb hard drive, and high-speed ASDL connectivity, I wonder how in the world I ever managed at CTDS. But somehow I did, and fell in love with that funny little computer. I only owned Macs, and would only work at companies that used them, until 1996, at which point I realized my passion and loyalty were competing directly with my career advancement potential, and I began to work with and eventually own PCs as well.

Original photo from CTDS web site

I spent two years at the school, at which time I left because I couldn't afford to stay, but also because I was ready to experience some place other than Boston. My then-boyfriend, Hal, and I decided to move together. We made lists of the places we'd be willing to live and Washington, DC was the first city that appeared on both lists. It wasn't near the top of either, but it was the only place we could agree on.

When we moved here, Hal hoped to find employment at PBS, as he had done some work at their Boston affiliate, WGBH. I had no idea what I would do, so I took a resume when I accompanied him there. I ended up getting a job there only a few weeks later. Hal never did find work at PBS, but eventually ended up at The Washington Post instead, where he still works.

I was at PBS for three years, first as a researcher in the program data and analysis department, and later as a writer and editor in the corporate information department.

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I first left PBS in 1990 for an affiliated organization, the Association of America's Public Television Stations, hired originally as a writer and researcher about local public television station activities. In 1993, I was promoted into the position of information and computer services manager, and also created and managed a grant-funded clearinghouse project about how public television licensees were successfully negotiating and managing change as they began to evolve into telecommunications centers.

My last day at APTS was December 29, 1995, though I continued to provide occasional web, network and Macintosh trouble-shooting on a consultancy basis. On January 2, 1996, I began the new year with a new job, when I joined the Association of American Medical Colleges as Electronic Information Specialist in the Office of Information Resources. In May of 1997, I was promoted to Manager of Web Resources and then to Director of Web Resources in September, 1998. In those positions, I was responsible for developing and managing systems that use the World-Wide Web to provide access to association information and research resources, developing and maintaining systems for secure information exchange between the association and its constituents, and developing and maintaining executive information systems, among other responsibilities. Basically, my staff and I managed and built the Association's Internet services.

In April 1999, I returned to PBS where, as Director of Electronic Communications, I was responsible for providing strategic direction to the corporation's Intranet (PBS Inline), conferencing (PBS Express) and Extranet initiatives.

I enjoyed being back at PBS, and wasn't really looking to leave. I had primarily taken the job in order to work on an extranet initiative that sought to bring together public television and public radio to build a public-broadcasting wide communications system. But in January of 2000, after having worked on it for nearly a year, the initiative was indefinitely placed on hold, and I wasn't sure that the job was going to continue to challenge me. At the same time, a friend contacted me about a position he'd interviewed for but decided not to take because he wasn't sure he'd be staying in DC. He put me in touch with the CEO of the company, MDLinx, and in March they offered me the position of chief technology officer. I started April 3, 2000.