Hi, I’m Karen. My dream job is at Duarte.
You’re looking for your next content developer. Have a look at my resume. You can contact me at karenxcheng (at) gmail.com.
You want someone who loves to tell stories:
It started in 9th grade, when I joined the speech and debate team. I got up to give a speech that I’d rehearsed a hundred times. Halfway through the speech, I froze. I’d forgotten my next line. I stumbled for the rest of the speech, so nervous that I thought my knees were going to give out from under me.
From that moment on, I became obsessed with what made a speaker great. The kind who can hypnotize you, who can make all your surroundings disappear, and make it just about you.
That’s why I want to work at Duarte.
I’ve got many passions in life. Public speaking. Designing. Acting. Performing music. I’m starting to see what the common thread to all of them is. Each one of these is an art – the art of communicating a message to someone else.
You want someone who can take dense content and bring it to life:
In 5 minutes, I break down music theory and bring it alive in front of 500 people.
Scott Berkun (best selling author of Confessions of a Public Speaker) called it his “favorite talk of Seattle Ignite.”
You want someone who understands the power of visual design:
After wading in Excel spreadsheets and crunching numbers on app usage data, I turned it into this infographic. It was cited in the local news and in the Huffington Post.
You can also check out my other design work.
You want someone who shares your clients’ passion for technology:
You’re in Silicon Valley, and many of your clients are very technical. You want someone as passionate about technology as they are.
Here’s an app product concept I created for Evernote.
Here’s some feedback I got from a tech talk I did for Excel:
Karen – I was at your presentation this morning and I just wanted to say it was by far the best session I have attended so far this year! 8:30am is a brutal timeslot for sure, but you made it fun right from the beginning, you demonstrated really cool new features in a way that was easy for everyone to understand, and you delivered it all with a presentation style among the best I’ve ever seen delivering technical information.” - Eric S.
I’m also the co-founder and designer for 520 or 90, a disruptive Seattle traffic app that was featured in the Huffington Post, named Techflash startup of the week, and whose design received Geekwire editor’s pick for iOS.
You want someone who understands strategy and marketing:
Because just understanding technology is not enough – you need someone who can communicate how it fits into the big picture of the business.
I graduated from a top 10 business school at The University of Texas at Austin at the top of my class with a 4.0.
I’ve also got three internships of marketing experience: as a product manager for Internet Explorer, a PR intern for Pickaprof.com, and a marketing intern for Cunningham Market Research.
You want someone who’s great with people:
You want someone who’s great in a team, and someone you trust to represent Duarte to clients.
- I lead a team of 10 people to develop features for the next version of Excel. I’ve worked on the strategic vision for Excel, working with high-level Directors and VPs at Microsoft.
- Outside of my day job, I’m a freelance designer. I listen closely to clients’ needs to create work they love.
- While in school, I taught and mentored 90 college students as a teaching assistant.
Karen was always fair to our students and she always treated them the same way she liked to be treated” – Rick Byars, Distinguished Senior Lecturer, University of Texas at Austin
You’re looking for someone to join you to change the world:
And I hope that someone is me.
Contact me at karenxcheng (at) gmail.com.
