You already know Ellen is “an award-winning writer/editor specializing in profiles, Q&As, and case studies; consumer health; education and career change; business; and grammatical near-perfectionism” (a crack AP copyeditor, though she uses the serial comma in off-hours).

What else?

Professional background:

  • • Director of communications at Experience Works, a nonprofit that puts older, low-income people to work in 30 states. She managed three staff, four contracts, and a budget, oversaw the website, and acted as media relations deputy … created weekly board and staff e-newsletters … wrote case studies, talking points, donor appeals, news releases, and daily Facebook copy (improved response almost 400% in one year!) … edited web copy, grant proposals, donor appeals, webinars, surveys, and official pubs … produced EW’s calendar/policy handbook two months earlier, with 15% fewer pages … and plenty more.
  • • Managing editor at The Washingtonian for nearly 13 years. That’s the city/regional magazine of Washington, DC, where she coordinated editors, designers, and production staff to get 152 issues to press and oversaw a copyeditor, four fact checkers, and a proofreader. When not in production, she’d research medical mysteries, interview college presidents, write about everything from cancer to career changes, promote new issues on WTOP, and blog about a Kennedy who’s bad at politics.
  • • Deputy editor of Independent Banker, a nationwide monthly trade magazine. She coordinated editorial staff in DC with the design vendor in Chicago to shift production a week earlier than before. Taking first read, Ellen edited articles explaining to readers how legislation and regulations would affect their daily work. She tracked submissions, edited e-newsletters and news releases, and wrote about business – a lot.
  • • Senior editor, Currents, a nationwide magazine for campus professionals. Ellen spent eight years covering institutional advancement – philanthropy, fundraising and donor/corporate relations, ethics, government relations, alumni publications – as well as determining the editorial calendar with the boss, hiring writers, profiling professors, and checking proofs.

Other skills:

  • • Ellen can ghostwrite. For three chairmen of the Independent Community Bankers of America, she combined their opinions with staff white papers and interviews to ghostwrite a folksy, factual op-ed column every month. She’s also written sections of two AARP books on improving communities, a book foreword for a healthcare CEO, talking points for the CEO of Experience Works, a monthly column for an ICBA senior VP, articles by and Q&As with business leaders, and collaborative op-eds and campaign pieces for three Montgomery County officeholders.
  • • She brings life to words. For a Washington City Paper cover story on the CrisisLink hotline, she captured a chilling conversation between a wide-eyed call taker and an anonymous man who said he “just wanted to hear a comforting voice” before he died. In Washingtonian’s tribute to the founder of the Carol Jean Cancer Foundation, she noted a swimming-pool scene complete with shrieking teenagers, their artificial limbs tossed to the side near the towels.
  • • She knows books. More than an editor on half a dozen books published by Foreign Policy, Island Press, Piemonte Press, and others, she’s the proud sold-out author of Innkeeping Unlimited: Practical, Low-Cost Ways to Improve Your B&B and Win Repeat Business.
  • • She might make you laugh. Her songs and sketches have been performed for up to 800 people (by Hexagon, “Washington’s only original political satirical musical comedy revue”), skewering everything from Pepco to Jeopardy! to the White House dinner crashers. You need a sense of humor in this business!