Dismantling Hierarchy

As Baltimore’s premier art and design school, MICA’s previous website fell short of representing the school’s unique and evolved identity.  When MICA embarked on what would be a two-and-half-year journey to redesign their website, they set out with an audacious vision - to topple the hierarchy and rethink the matrix when it came to traditional web design and content management.  Their new website is a testament to “mission accomplished.” I served as the Lead Web Content and Change Management Strategist for their web migration project, known as Project Momentum.

Working in step with the institution’s Communications Division, I:

• Developed and implemented a Content Migration Plan that included: the evaluation of existing content, a gap analysis to determine gaps in or need for new content, establishing guidelines to create web content in a new voice and tone that aligns with MICA’s branding refresh, and SEO and content tagging best practices.

• Developed and implemented a Change Management Strategy to support the execution of Project Momentum, accounting for changes to web processes, the creation of roles and positions to support new web management processes, change communications to internal MICA audiences and key external stakeholders, and risk identification/mitigation.

• Led the recruitment and management of a Content Team, composed of freelance writers and members of MICA’s Strategic Communications Team to assist with content migration tasks.

• Designed a unique content migration process that engaged content owners across the college at every level, priming MICA for their future, more decentralized approach to web content management.

• Provided input and procured frameworks for developing new content management system training college-wide.

• Developed engagement strategies to obtain input, feedback, and direction from MICA’s senior leadership