Tellwell Story Co. + Studio
The Big Stuff
2022-present
content writer, promoted to content specialist
etc.
The story
In 2022, I was drifting.
I had left medicine in the middle of a pandemic, abandoning coworkers and friends to the hallways of PPE shortages and endless phone calls from relatives who had just heard about hydrochloroquine or how COVID was actually not real. Before the pandemic, I was getting ready to apply to nursing school. Now? I was partially admitted to a psych unit because I’d cracked.
I couldn’t explain to even one more concerned citizen that masks were safe and effective.
I couldn’t comfort yet another family member as they begged me to find a way to let them be with their ill loved one as they took their last breaths.
I couldn’t listen to one more person thank me for my service, as if I were a soldier at war instead of a CNA on the COVID phone lines.
After the hospitalization, including a strongly worded discussion with my psychiatrist reminding me that I can’t help anyone if I’m dead (regardless of if my death was by my own hand), I began healing. It took time and it took leaving the medical profession for good.
As I healed, I found myself looking to the future. Where did I want to go? Who did I want to be?
Every time I asked, I’d hear my father’s voice respond.
“You should write.”
And so I did. I stumbled across Tellwell’s opening thanks to a friend’s facebook. I applied quickly, since the window was closing in two days. I also applied for their other open position (project manager). I needed a stable job and, in honesty, I was a little desparate.
I got the job.
I spent my first year at Tellwell as their content writer, under the wing of Katie Beedy. I spent my days writing and writing and writing. Blogs to socials to articles to press releases to scripts to film timelines…you name it and I probably wrote it. I spent any free time I had identifying my weak points and creating action plans to grow them. I didn’t know a lot about SEO for example (I didn’t even know what it stood for when I first started), and now I am an SEO specialist thanks to UC Davis.
I also spent a lot of time on process-based tasks. I, like any good nerd, love a well-executed template. I began developing templates for the content team, and continued to refine and revise them as we used them company-wide.
I also spearheaded a voice and tone development and documentation, fiddling with the resulting template (see my portfolio!) as we wavered between sharing this feature with clients and keeping it to an internal-only audience.
After a year, I was promoted to content specialist and there came a company wide restructure. I was to be in the design team, reporting to Senior Design Strategist Sandie Kuehn. I was to continue the path I’d laid out, creating and documenting the processes that go into the writing, as well as the writing itself.
Tellwell also is where my love and knowledge of generative AI comes from. I began working diligently in my free time to develop voice and tone programs for anyone to use. I started courses on data analytics and on machine learning. I even am a beta tester for the AI children’s toy from Curio!
It’s thanks to Tellwell I have my backbone again. It’s thanks to Tellwell that I was reminded of who I am. And it’s thanks to Tellwell that I am finding a beautiful intersection of process/theory with practice/creativity.
