Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, living there until I was 23 years-old and following a brief stint in Las Vegas for one year in 2005, I set out to do great things in hopes of impacting policy from the top by moving to the Washington, DC metropolitan area in 2006.
Currently, I live in Alexandria, VA with my wife, Christine, daughter, Ainsleigh, son, Nolan, and two beagles, Toby and Tessa. I am still soul searching, trying to find the meaning of life. My family is a big part of life's meaning for me, but not all of it.
During this search, I decided to attend graduate school to further pursue my interests in public policy and public administration.
Recently, in December 2009, I graduated from George Mason University with a Masters in Public Administration with a Concentration in Nonprofit Management. I also hold a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with a Minor in Spanish from University of Nevada, Reno in 2003.
My interests lie in reading books that deal with philosophy. I also read horror novels, particularly anything with apocalyptic questions. I find it interesting to follow what happens to people and how they react to the breakdown of society. In particular, I will read anything written by Brian Keene.
I also enjoy creating graphics and coding Web sites with Adobe Creative Suite (worked with CS5 professionally). I really enjoy pouring my heart and soul into my work so that I can see it online. The overall look of the site is what really interests me. The artistic side of design.
This love for Web development began in college while building a Web site for my fraternity chapter. This personal interest led to a professional opportunity with DCS Services, LLC, building and sending e-mails for Democratic Congressional clients and later with iConstituent, LLC who also help Congressional offices send e-mail communications to their constituents.
Recently, I worked for the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) national office as their Manager of Grassroots Fundraising and Online Advocacy and with United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) at the national office as their eCommuncations/eDevelopment Specialist. For LCV, I maintained and integrated Google Analytics and RSS feeds into their Web site, built political campaign Web pages and coordinated e-Marketing and fundraising campaigns. For UCP, I handled all outbound e-Marketing communications and fundraising. For both positions, I primarily worked with the Convio online communications platform (eCRM/CMS), several social networking platforms and blogs, UCPeople, Act Green, etc. I also managed many advocacy campaigns such as WhoWillCare.net and Don't Block My Vote for UCP and the Dirty Dozen and Environmental Facebook Web page builds for LCV.
Much of my experience consists of working with HTML and CSS using Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver with the injection of some Flash and Illustrator, most recently implementing HTML 5 and CSS3 elements as well as jQuery and FBML on Facebook. Also, I am experienced with applying search engine optimization (SEO) using XML site maps and search engine submission techniques.
Please view my latest volunteer project, Heather Carpenter's nonprofit management/education Web site. This work was completed from September through November 2010 in an effort to build my portfolio as well as gain more experience in graphic and Web design. It uses XFade, jQuery and is predominately built on a Wordpress backend.
In my spare time, I enjoy playing video games and spending time with my family. I also strive to see nearby sights as often as I can because, as much as I am fascinated by the public and nonprofit sectors, I am just as much intrigued by American history and there is great deal of history in the area.
I also volunteer for a local group. I am an active volunteer with my fraternity area alumni group in the Washington, DC metro area, the SigEp Feds. In fact, one of my Web designs is the SigEp Feds blog.
I also dabble in photography and I like a nice red wine on occasion.
I invite you to learn more about me. Feel free to look around. Thanks for stopping by.
