Professional History and Education

I am a digital marketer, SEO consultant, and web developer based in New Bedford, Massachusetts. While attending LaSalle Academy as a high school senior, I took a computer science course in an attempt to get out of taking a fourth year of math. This did not work, but I was able to learn essential development skills in Java that would help me progress in my career path.

While attending Salve Regina University as a marketing major, I took a work-study job for a local non-profit, the Andrea Rizzo Foundation, who I still consult for, based on my experience with coding. While working for them, I was able to learn about HTML and WordPress development, email marketing, social media marketing and server maintenance on the job.

In my junior year at Salve, I attended the DMEF IMIX conference as one of the top 25 applicants for digital marketing students with strong backgrounds. During this conference, I attended seminars with various marketing professionals and SEO experts, and worked in a group project to develop and pitch an ad campaign to AARP. Our pitch focused on analysis of our target demographic and identified the short-comings of their recent campaigns. Based on this, we made the recommendation to shift the focus from promotion via YouTube to an email-based communication that would be easier for the less tech-saavy intended audience to distribute to their friends and colleagues.

As a senior, I began my internship at The Platinum House Jewelers in Newport. This was originally meant to be a data-entry position, but quickly expanded to a full-stack marketing role and a permanent part-time job once I completed the work much faster than they anticipated. During this time, I managed the data entry of financial records, took product photography, developed print and social media ads, managed their Facebook page, assisted in sales and customer service and began working at their sister company, J.H. Breakell & Co. as well, where I assisted the production manager in shipping online and phone orders and inventory management. While doing this work, I recognized some areas of improvement in their business processes, and introduced new spreadsheets for inventory management and repair tracking, which made the interactions with customers faster and less frantic.

After working at The Platinum House, I began working as a part-time SEO consultant, marketing specialist and web developer for other small businesses and organizations. During this time, I reached local page 1 on Google search for a local jeweler for their high-value keywords, developed print marketing tools for a wholesaler jeweler while optimizing their Shopify site site and product feeds, performed analysis on surveys and web traffic for a lobbying agency, and re-built a non-profit website in WordPress. Many of these are no longer in operation following the retirement of their owners/presidents.

Soon after that, I began working as a digital marketer at WIMCO Villas, working on SEO and website content management. After 2 months, I became their webmaster. During this time, I learned just about everything on the job, or through online courses, aside from what I had already picked up in college or my past positions. I manage several ASP.Net sites as well as a WordPress-based blog and do both the front and back-end coding as well as writing and modifying SQL queries. I also assist in email marketing, perform data analysis, and act as a go-between for the marketing and IT Departments.

Interests Outside of Work

I am an amateur musician and collector of instruments. My main instruments are saxophone, bass guitar, and guitar, but I also dabble in banjo, mandolin, EWI, Appalachian dulcimer and keyboards. I have been involved in multiple school bands at LaSalle Academy and Salve Regina University as well as two alternative rock bands as a bassist.

Like many others, being stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a new found hobby of baking bread, as well as cooking more at home.  My specialties include Italian wedding soup, chili con carne, corn chowder, grilled steak with a Mediterranean spice blend, pulled pork, Amish white bread, banana bread, French onion bites, and a classic tomato sauce.

I am an avid fantasy sports manager, as a Red Sox and Bears fan.