Elizabeth Alley
Elizabeth Alley is a Certified Professional Technical Communicator (CPTC) with 10+ years of experience in technical communication preceded by 11+ years in nonprofit public art project management. She advocates for the user, providing clear and concise information to help readers do their jobs or understand a product or process. As an artist, she focuses on sketching, painting, teaching art to adults, and advocating for the use of sketching in everyday life as a tool to improve memory and observation skills. She has organized, curated, produced, and participated in over 30 solo and group shows since 1999.
Bernard Aschwanden
Bernard Aschwanden is a recognized publishing technologies expert.He is an Adobe Certified Expert,a Certified Technical Trainer,and the author of numerous articles on xml-based publishing and single sourcing. He is the founder and President of Publishing Smarter.Bernard is a past president of the Society for Technical Communication.
Gavin Austin
Gavin Austin is a Principal Technical Writer at Salesforce, where he’s been writing a variety of content for over 16 years. He helped Salesforce radically change its content strategy in 2015, and he has delivered a number of highly-rated talks at Dreamforce, Intelligent Content Conference, Information Development World, Write the Docs San Francisco, University of Washington, Blue Shield of California, STC Summit, CA Technologies, Agile2013, WritersUA, LavaCon, and more.
Art Berger
Art Berger works as a Technical Writer for IBM, where he helps create technical documentation for the company’s cloud services and open source projects. His team produces a wide range of products, including instructions, training materials, application program interface (API) documents, user interface (UI) text, command line interface (CLI) strings, error messages, videos, infographics, and more. As the President of the STC Carolina chapter, he enjoys helping people in the local area connect with other professionals, events, and resources to succeed in their tech comm pursuits.
Chad Bevard
Early in his career, Chad Bevard designed and built light gauge steel custom homes. Over time, this construction experience, coupled with sales and design positions in the lumber industry, led him to MiTek. For almost a decade, Chad provided technical support to MiTek’s component manufacturing customers and then, in 2015, moved to MiTek’s Documentation Team. During his time on the documentation team, Chad developed a passion for content strategy and found his niche in understanding and documenting MiTek’s content ecosystem. Today, Chad holds the title of Technical Content Strategist and is completing a complex migration to a new CMS platform.
Viqui Dill
As a technical writer and editor in Winchester, VA, Viqui Dill is passionate about continued education and lifelong learning for those in our field. Sharing the tips and tricks she has gathered in her 25 years as a writer, she is actively promoting networking with other writers to help us all learn and stay connected. Dill plays bass with STC’s own “Rough Drafts” band and her family band “The Dill Pickers” performed at the 2020 virtual Summit. Dill describes herself as “Technical writer, wife and mom, bass player, worship leader, I’m happiest when folks sing along with me.”
Tim Esposito
Timothy Esposito is a Senior Principal Technical Writer at Oracle with over 20 years of technical communication experience. At Oracle he works on logistics software and prepares online help, API documentation, and XML-based documents. Prior to joining Oracle, Tim developed and delivered training for enterprise resource planning software. Tim is the Secretary of the Society for Technical Communication and an STC Fellow. He has been the President, VP, Treasurer, Webmaster, and Scholarship manager of the STC Philadelphia Metro Chapter. Tim lives just outside Philadelphia with his wife and son.
Liz Fraley
Liz Fraley, Single-Sourcing Solutions, is a serial entrepreneur. She’s founded two companies, sits on the boards of three non-profits, and is constantly coming up with new ways to share knowledge in the technical communications and content industries. She has worked in high-tech and government sectors, at companies of all different sizes (from startups to huge enterprises). She advocates approaches that directly improve organizational efficiency, productivity, and interoperability. If you ask her, she’ll say she’s happiest when those around her are successful.
John Freiberger
John has been a technical writer in the greater Rochester area his entire career, and is currently with LenelS2. He holds a BA in Secondary Education from SUNY Oswego and an MS in Information Design and Technology from SUNY Polytechnic Institute. John continues to learn about visual design, visual communication, and emerging technologies. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with family and friends, running, playing guitar, and reading.
Amy Friend
As a Learning Solutions Architect with Skillsoft, Amy helps learners and leaders to achieve greater value from learning. She holds an MS in Instructional Technology, and is a Certified Black Belt and ASQ Certified Quality Manager. Her experience and service-leader mindset enable Amy to deliver millions of dollars in value for a variety of industries across all stages of the learning value stream. Amy is an Associate Fellow of STC and an award-winning learning designer. She has presented and held many roles with the Rochester STC Chapter STC. She lives in Ithaca NY and is a proud super host for Airbnb.
MK Grueneberg
MaryKay has been a professional technical communicator for 37 years. She is a writer and editor with ten years of team management experience, a Certified Professional Technical Communicator, and an STC Fellow. MaryKay believes in the importance of communication in every facet of life and enjoys helping to demystify technical things. She currently is a User Assistance Development Architect at SAP and is a remote employee working with multiple global teams. MaryKay has presented at LavaCon, Spectrum, Leadership Days at STC Summits, STC Chicago meetings, other STC chapter meetings, and internal SAP conferences.
Becky Hall
Rebecca C. Hall is the owner of Rebecca C. Hall Consulting specializing in documentation solution design, context sensitive online help, and user documentation. A Society for Technical Communication (STC) Fellow, she has presented at multiple conferences and has won several awards for her work. Becky has over 30 years of technical communication experience. Becky’s work focuses on the user’s needs. By finding the gap between what the user knows and what the user needs to know we can develop effective documentation that increases user success.
Mark Kleinsmith
Mark Kleinsmith has over 25 years of Technical Communications experience in the software industry, from installing and supporting software applications to writing traditional help systems, training manuals, and creating online video help libraries. Currently, Mark is the Director of Technical Communications for MiTek, Inc. and oversees a team of technical communicators who are responsible for creating and deploying content that is used by over 5,000 software users. MiTek primarily uses targeted help and training videos to educate its user base and, since 2013, MiTek’s customers have accessed their software help through various online Content Management Systems.
Lou Prosperi
Lou Prosperi is a Senior Documentation and Curriculum Manager for Oracle’s Utility Global Business Unit. Following a career in game design, Lou went to work as a technical writer and instructional designer and has been in that role for the last 20 years, providing user and technical documentation and training materials for enterprise applications used in the utilities industry. A self-proclaimed “Imagineering Evangelist,” Lou’s current area of interest is how to apply the principles and practices employed by Walt Disney Imagineering to other fields, including instructional design.
Matt Reiner
Throughout his time on multiple product teams, Matt has contributed as a scrum master, technical writer, marketer, UX writer, and speaker. Matt was a K15t app user and now he advocates for users within the team that makes K15t apps. Matt believes good information matters to users, good tools matter to information creators, and fluid collaboration matters to leaders seeking out tools.
Kerry Roberts
Kerry Roberts works as the lead technical writing support for a team in an Azure setting. Between maintaining her work schedule and taking care of her 5-year-old son, Kerry has a lot to keep track of from her home office. Thankfully she learned everything she needed to know about working from home during her first internship with Judy Shenouda at Shenouda Associates Inc., where she continues to be employed.
Elisabeth Sanders-Park
Elisabeth is a writer, trainer, and respected speaker and thought leader in the field of career development. She co-authored No One Is Unemployable (a manual for career coaches) and The 6 Reasons You’ll Get the Job along with other widely used resources for job seekers. She is an expert in brain-based teaching/learning strategies and committed to creating tools and training that produce immediate and lasting results. Known for delivering inspiring, fun, practical training, Elisabeth has trained 30,000+ trainers across the U.S., Australia, and Canada to deliver better content in a more powerful way. You can reach her at elisabeth@worknetsolutions.com.
Kelly Schrank
Kelly Schrank, MA, ELS, has been in technical and medical communication for over 20 years. Through her business, Bookworm Editing Services, she brings consistency, structure, and clarity to her clients’ content regardless of whether she is writing content like blog posts, style guides, and standard operating procedures or editing formulary dossiers, manuscripts, proposals, slide decks, and training materials. Kelly is an Associate Fellow of STC and a BELS-certified Editor in the Life Sciences. Kelly has presented on checklists, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, editing, side gigs, and networking in webinars and conferences.
Judy Shenouda
Judy Shenouda is owner of Shenouda Associates Inc., a home-based business that researches, writes, and edits the many professional publications that streamline processes, launch products, and promote each client’s brand. From a separate home-based nook and cranny, at a writer’s desk specially crafted by her brother, Judy has authored and independently published Career Success in 12 Easy Steps: A Journal; A Bisl of This, A Bisl of That: Eating Our Way; and Living Well in Froggy’s World of Plenty: Sweet Talk to Read Aloud.
Jarod Sickler
Jarod is the Documentation Manager & Customer Success Manager, Jorsek, makers of easyDITA. Jarod oversees the Jorsek documentation site and is involved in managing complex customer implementations of easyDITA. Simultaneously, he’s a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester, specializing in metaphysics and epistemology. His dissertation focuses on the role and importance of the grounding relation in the overall metaphysical structure of epistemic justification. If you’re looking for an effective sleep aid, he’ll happily share his research with you. In his spare time, Jarod tries to convince his kids that he’s still cool. They aren’t buying it.
David Dylan Thomas
David Dylan Thomas is the author of the book Design for Cognitive Bias from A Book Apart and is the creator and host of the Cognitive Bias Podcast. He has developed digital strategies for major clients in entertainment, healthcare, publishing, finance, and retail. He has presented at TEDNYC, SXSW Interactive, Confab, An Event Apart, LavaCon, UX Copenhagen, Artifact, IA Conference, Design and Content Conference, and the Wharton Web Conference on topics at the intersection of bias, design, and social justice.
Angela Trenkle
Angela Trenkle is a scientific technical writer who currently works in pre-clinical technical writing. Her love of science combined with her passion for writing led her into the field of scientific technical communication at a pre-clinical research organization where her work involves contributing to the documentation of study reports for various infectious diseases including COVID-19. Angela is an active member of the Society for Technical Communication Washington, DC-Baltimore Chapter and the American Medical Writers Association, Mid-Atlantic Chapter. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and a certificate in Technical Writing.
