My Story
About This Blog
I’ve blogged off and on since middle school (back before online journals were even called blogs), took a break toward the end of college, and then, as I neared my twenty-fifth birthday, felt the itch to start blogging again. I started this blog in 2010 to share my experiences striving to match reality to the dream and vision I have for my life.
This is a blog about finding joy on the road to becoming who I am at heart, even in moments when joy feels out of reach — these moments are what I call the “not-quite-there.”
This blog has followed me from being a full-time working mother in New York’s Hudson Valley to being a stay-at-home mother on Nantucket Island, to spending 10 months in northern Wyoming cowboy country, to spending a couple of years in northern Colorado, and now to central Texas. The content mirrors that journey: a mix of photo-journal, mom-blog-style parenting, birth, and breastfeeding posts in the early days and increasingly more posts on business as you near today.
These days, I write about balancing business ownership with a family of six, mothering my daughters, traveling, attempting to meet personal goals, and other bits and pieces of life.
Quick Info
Current business
Equalize Digital, Inc. (VC-funded)
Web expertise
Working in WordPress since 2010 and digital accessibility since 2016. Freelance → marketing agency owner → product founder. I know enough code to be dangerous and occasionally contribute to other WordPress and open-source projects.
Adventurer at heart
I lived in five states in the first ten years of my marriage, then spent two years living full-time and traveling in an RV. I’ve been to every state except Alaska and a handful of other countries. My happy place is a tent in the woods or hiking up a mountain.
My Family
I married my husband, Chris, right out of college. We’ve been together for more than 20 years, and he is also my business partner. Chris and I have four daughters: Nora, Zara, Adelaide, and Vivienne.
I always knew that I wanted to be a mom, but what I didn’t know was that I would discover a love for entrepreneurship.
My Business Journey
I was a stay-at-home mom on Nantucket, babysitting to help make ends meet when a friend asked me to help her set up her WordPress site. One thing led to another, and soon I was designing and developing websites as a freelancer – plus helping with all sorts of other marketing-related things.
Though I initially fought it (I had dreams of owning a maternity store and doing lactation consultation work), I eventually realized that I was not only good at building and growing websites but also enjoyed the work. After freelancing off and on for three years, in 2014, I decided to get serious about making my business legitimate.
Road Warrior Creative
In 2015, my husband caught the bug and started helping part-time – by the end of that year, we realized that our dream was to have a business that fully supported our family and for both of us to have the freedom of self-employment. In January 2016, we rebranded my business from Au Coeur Design to Road Warrior Creative, and I took a break from blogging to focus on the new company. We set financial goals, and by May of 2016, Chris gave notice at his job.
Chris and I grew Road Warrior Creative, a certified B-corp, to a team of eight people distributed across the U.S. The company built websites and ran digital marketing campaigns for enterprise businesses, government agencies, nonprofits, and social good organizations. Some of our clients included Colorado State University, Lesbians Who Tech, Workforce Solutions Panhandle, Lean Startup Co., and Tommy’s Superfoods.
Equalize Digital
As we worked with larger and larger clients, we started to build more websites that needed to be accessible to people with disabilities. We realized we enjoyed accessibility work more than the marketing, and in 2020, Equalize Digital was born as a “pandemic pivot.”
Our lead developer, Steve, joined us as a partner, and we launched our WordPress plugin, Accessibility Checker. In 2023, we raised a pre-seed investment round from Emilia Capital, and my current focus is on the rapid iteration of and marketing of our software.
Current users of our software include NASA, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Mint Mobile, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Central Florida, and the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, among others. We were a 2023 Gaady Award winner.
Beyond the Blog
In addition to running my business, I am active in the WordPress community, co-host two podcasts, and speak at events around the world. Here are some other places I can be found.
Events
I run the WordPress Accessibility Meetup and co-lead the WordPress Accessibility Day conference. Visit my events page for a calendar of upcoming events.
Press
I’ve been a guest lecturer at Colorado State University and have been featured or published in Forbes, The New York Times, Huffington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, as well as on numerous podcasts, blogs, and other websites. In July 2018, my family’s journey to full-time RV living was told on an episode of Going RV on the Great American Country channel (sister station to HGTV). See more press.
Social
You can most frequently find me on social media on Twitter, LinkedIn, and (occasionally) Mastodon. I’m also active in Make WordPress Slack and Post Status Slack.