I currently work as a Continuous Quality Improvement Analyst with 4 years of experience working in the mental health field.

After graduating in 2015 with a bachelor's degree in Psychology, I worked as part of a team providing crisis response, therapy, and care coordination to youth experiencing acute mental health needs.

After 2 years of that work, I moved into my current role and discovered my passion and talent for more behind-the-scenes administrative work.

As I finish my M.A. in Health Communication and Promotion (December 2023), I look forward to using my new skills and qualifications to continue my work in promoting the importance of mental health services.

Reach out via Facebook, Instagram, or email: I’d

love to hear from ya!

Hello there!

Portfolio

MAPS TO MENTAL HEALTH

In the spring of 2023, I took COMSTRAT 565 at Washington State University.

This was a course based on professional marketing, communication management, and campaign management. This piece was part of a semester-long project in which students created two original pieces pertaining to a communication campaign they created.

To create this piece, I researched mental health statistics in Americans ages 20-30 (my target demographic), conducted interviews with target audience members, and made changes to the pieces as needed based on overarching themes discovered in the interviews.

After deciding on my campaign topic (mental health) and doing research on the topic to build credibility and ensure correct information was utilized in my graphics, I created my pieces in Canva. I then interviewed twelve individuals in my target audience (young adults ages 20-30). I chose these individuals randomly from people who met my criteria and who had responded to a Facebook post I made seeking interviewees. I took each interviewee out to coffee for the interview as payment for their time and contribution. I recorded and transcribed the interviews, and looked for overarching themes that directed what changes I would make to the pieces to be campaign-worthy and ready.

This piece was part of a very fun project that intimidated me at first. It was very time-consuming throughout the semester to conduct interviews at physical locations and to transcribe these 15-30 30-minute Interviews, but it was also very rewarding and satisfying to complete the project. I enjoyed creating the visuals and hearing what people liked or would change about the pieces I created. I also enjoyed conducting the interviews and sometimes having to think on my feet to get better engagement from my interviewees.

Self-Love Above Social Likes

In the fall 2022, I took COMHLTH 572 at Washington State University. This was a class focused on communicating health to specialized populations. This assignment had us create graphic design pieces for the WSU Women’s Center around body positivity, diet culture, and obesity and body stigma.

After studying the brief from the Women’s Center, I researched ways to combat diet culture and body stigma on college campuses and used the pertinent information to create the graphic in Canva. To further ensure a positive message incorporating accurate information, I researched statistics about diet culture on college campuses and ways to combat diet culture and stigma around body size and type. I then created the graphic in Canva using relevant information and included a call to action that links to the Women’s Center.

This was a very fun graphic to design and one of my first experiences using Canva. I found Canva to be very user-friendly and I was able to easily present my desired information in what I found to be a fun and accessible way.

Stressed? Here are Some Tips

In the spring of 2023, I took COMSTRAT 565 at Washington State University. This was a course based on professional marketing, communication management, and campaign management. This piece was part of a semester-long project in which students created two original pieces pertaining to a communication campaign they created, conducted interviews with target audience members, analyzed those interviews for overarching themes regarding the piece, and made changes to the pieces accordingly.

I conducted research around mental health in my target audience (20- to 30-year-olds in America), created the piece using Canva, interviewed twelve members of my target audience, transcribed and analyzed the interviews, and made changes based on overarching themes that were present in those interviews.

I researched how young adults ages 20-30 can positively impact their mental health and drew upon my professional work in the mental health field to come up with content for the graphic that I then created in Canva. I interviewed twelve members of the target audience who responded to a Facebook post I made (payment for their time and effort was coffee at a place of their choosing). After transcribing the interviews, I analyzed them for themes of things the interviewees liked about the graphic and what they would change and made changes to the visual accordingly.

My original copy had different text at the top of the graphic, but my Interviews with target audience members brought up Ideas of having text there that answered the question “Why should I pay attention to this?” With the help of research and my interviewees, I came up with the current text that states that 73% of people experience stress that impacts their mental health (McLean Hospital, 2023). I used this In the hopes that this large percentage would help people understand this is not a problem they suffer with alone and to pique their interest enough to read the rest of the graphic.

Of the two graphics I created for this project, this one was more heavily criticized, and I made a lot of significant changes based on interviewee feedback. I appreciated the whole process that went into making and editing this graphic and was able to make a more well-rounded graphic that appealed to the target audience.

BUDGET TRAVELS

I took COM 561 in the fall of 2021 at Washington State University. This class focused on multimedia content creation and taught us how to effectively communicate across various digital mediums. This piece was an assignment In which students would create a logo using Photoshop.

After choosing what to do my logo for (I chose to “create” a travel agency named Budget Travels), I spent time In Photoshop creating this logo with no template.

This was a time-consuming project, learning how to blend and create different shapes, how to play with layering different elements of the design, and how to create different effects. I spent about a week trying to add various effects to the pieces to create a textured-looking luggage tag, a shiny metallic, buckle, faded handwriting, and shiny plastic covering the writing.

Photoshop was a difficult beast to tackle, and I was frustrated at many stages during the creation of this graphic. Having multiple layers was something that took some getting used to, but once I got the hang of using the layers and the effects I was going for, I was very proud of the finished piece. Looking at It now, there are things I would do differently, but as this was my first experience ever creating something in Photoshop, I am pleased with the outcome.

the viscount dance studio

In the fall of 2023, I took COMSTRAT 701, the Capstone Project Course to finalize my Master’s degree in health communication and promotion.

This assignment had students select any organization to give a brand refresh. I chose the Viscount Dance Studio in Portland, OR.

After researching the Viscount’s online presence (their website, Facebook page, and Instagram page), I set about creating a few different logo options in Canva that personified the brand that the Viscount has cultivated for itself online. Though I created a few options, this logo was my favorite to create, and the logo that I felt best embodied the Viscount’s desired look and feel.

This was a very fun assignment, and I was intrigued by the idea of creating a new visual that still “felt” like the company I was doing this brand refresh for. It felt like an added layer of complexity (and fun) to not just create something from my mind, but to take into account an already-established company and to create something that felt like them.

Metrics That Matter

This was another piece that was done for my fall 2022 COMHLTH 572 class: communicating health to specialized populations. This was my third graphic about body image and stigma and diet culture on college campuses done for the WSU Women’s Center.

After reading the brief from the WSU Women’s Center, I researched diet culture and weight stigma on campuses and then created my graphic using Canva.

To conduct my research, I asked the following questions: “What is diet culture?” “What is obesity stigma?” and “What are the harms related to diet culture and obesity stigma?” Tomiyama, et. al. (2018) provided a lot of relevant information I was able to use to guide the information input on the graphic. Once I answered these questions, I put together relevant information that would catch the attention of young adults and included a call to action to scan the QR code to learn more about WSU’s Women’s Center.

This was a fun design because I finally got into playing around with colors in Canva. I was using a QR code, but hated the stark black-and-white generic QR code because it didn’t feel like it went with the rest of the graphic. I was still new to using Canva and creating graphics, but I started playing around and figured out how to change the QR code colors and ended up liking the result quite a bit.

Reference

Tomiyama, A., Carr, D., Granberg, E., et. al. (2018). How and why weight stigma drives the obesity “epidemic” and harms health. BMC Med 16, 123. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-018-1116-5

click here for the article

Resume: Work Experience

2021-present. Quality Management Analyst - Catholic Community Services

• Provide administrative support to direct service staff.
  
• Track contract deliverables per multiple contracts held at site-level.
• Analyze trends and implement site-level changes.

2019-2021. Family Support Specialist - Catholic Community Services

• Worked as part of a team providing mental health crisis response, intensive care coordination, and family and individual therapy to clients.
  

2018-2019. Office Worker - Oregon State University College of Business

• Maintained a smoothly-running office while remaining available to fulfill faculty requests and answer student questions.
  

Professional development

2018-2019. Active Minds Club OSU Chapter

• Served as secretary for a club committed to promoting safe mental health practices and destigmatizing the conversation around mental health.
  

2015. Young Adult Behavioral Health

• 40 internship/observation hours at Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene, OR.

2013-2015. EASA

• Volunteer work with young adults experiencing first-episode psychosis at Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene, OR.
  

education

2021-2023. Washington State University - Master of Arts

• Health Communication and Promotion.
  
• 4.0 GPA.
  

2015-2019. Oregon State University - Bachelor of Arts

• Psychology.
  
• Minor in Spanish.
  
• 3.61 GPA.
  

Blog

Introductory blog post

This portfolio was created as my semester-long capstone project for my Master’s program in Health Communication and Promotion, and is a demonstration of the skills I have learned throughout the program and my career thus far.

My passion for mental health started soon after I started my undergraduate degree in Psychology at Oregon State University. Though I didn’t know at the time what I specifically wanted to do with the degree, I immediately felt the importance of mental health and the struggles so many people can face. My first job after I graduated was providing mental health crisis response, therapy, and care coordination for youth experiencing acute mental health needs. While I was passionate about this type of direct service work, once the pandemic hit and everyone’s mental health took a hit, I experienced extreme compassion fatigue and burnout, and realized my calling was better suited to a supportive and more behind-the-scenes role.

I had fallen in love with the company I worked for, and was able to find an administrative role (my current position) that played to my strengths and still allowed me to contribute to this field that I found to be so important. While I loved my current role, it threw a wrench in my carefully curated

plans for myself. I had thought that with this stepping stone of direct service work, I would then go on to a Master’s degree in Counseling or Social Work. With the realization that this would not be the next step for me, I was at a bit of a loss for what to do next. When I found this program for Health Communication and Promotion, things clicked into place and I was ecstatic at having found a degree so well suited to my strengths and priorities.

As I reach the end of this program, I am not yet sure in which ways I will utilize this degree, but I am grateful for the skills I have learned and the many things I have learned these past few years from my professors and my cohort. I look forward to continuing to learn and to put into practice new and improved expertise.