
Freelance Consultant at XPLANE
Austin, Texas Area

Freelance Consultant at XPLANE
Austin, Texas Area
(Privately Held; Design industry)
June 2009 — Present (2 months)
Founded in 1993 by Dave Gray, XPLANE is an information design consultancy that drives results for many of the world’s leading corporations by clarifying complex business issues through visual collaboration.
With an innovative visual, multidisciplinary methodology, XPLANE is unique because we apply left and right-brained approaches to develop fresh solutions to your most challenging problems. Our approach accelerates understanding, which drives actions and results to help our customers. Companies have hired XPLANE to motivate employees, drive sales, convince decision makers and improve processes.
We draw from a diverse set of backgrounds to do this. We combine information designers, journalists, comic book artists, management consultants, software developers, trainers, technologists and a diversity of other expertise in order to look at challenges in new ways and provide fresh ideas and insights.
Today XPLANE is proud to serve 40 of the FORTUNE 500 companies around the globe. Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, XPLANE also operates offices in St. Louis and Madrid, facilitating 24/7 service for clients.
(Information Services industry)
April 2008 — Present (1 year 4 months)
VizThink Austin is a local chapter of the national organization VizThink. Marilyn Martin and I brought VizThink to Austin after having met with Dave Gray (creator of VizThink) and Tom Crawford, CEO. We currently have the largest visual thinking community in the U.S. and continue to grow. It's a learning community designed to gather speed around the visual thinking movement.
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Management Consulting industry)
February 2008 — Present (1 year 6 months)
Momentum Leadership is a small firm providing personalized solutions from very senior consultants. The mission of Momentum Leadership is to support organizations in defining their business objectives and achieving employee performance to create business excellence. All client engagements are staffed by consultants with a minimum of 10 to 15 years of leadership and development experience. Kerry Anne Ridley, President of ML, asked that I be in her network of practitioners and associates as an information designer. Together, we distill information and clarify it visually to help her clients streamline performance.
(Information Services industry)
May 2007 — Present (2 years 3 months)
I am currently the owner of an information design firm called BrightSpot. The services I offer include: Meeting Design and Support, Publication Design and Development, and Information Design and Production. I partner with clients to help them visualize complex information for their audiences. This can range from graphically recording any group process to designing and producing communication pieces, teaching tools, systems maps, etc. My goal is to support the public and private sectors by making mental models explicit and clear and therefore allowing organizations to take smart action. Together, my clients and I turn dense, complex, or even dull information into visually-pleasing, coherent and memorable tools for the people who need to interpret and use it.
BrightSpot: Illuminating Solutions
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Management Consulting industry)
January 2007 — Present (2 years 7 months)
I am currently an Associate of the San Francisco-based strategic planning firm The Grove Consultants International. The Grove has an extensive network of visual practitioners that they contract with on a regular basis.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Management Consulting industry)
February 2005 — December 2006 (1 year 11 months)
MPA , Public Affairs , 2004 — 2006
Graduated Summa Cum Laude.
BS , Magazine Journalism , 1995 — 2000
BA , Linguistics , 1995 — 2000
I also received two minors--one in Spanish and one in French--during this time at University.
SXSW