Howdy

With an artistic Mother, engineering Father, and access to a laptop on long roadtrips, Alison had much space in her childhood to create, build, and write. 

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Alison moved to Fargo, ND to pursue Architecture at NDSU where she met her husband. One year into the program, her love of designing the boards outweighed her delight in designing the buildings, so she moved across the river to further study art. Without an excellent drawing instructor in the architecture program Alison would have never known that there are skills to art that can be taught; not simply an innate gift. 

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At Minnesota State University of Moorhead she pursued a BFA in Art and Design with emphasis in Graphic Design while also studying mass communications, photography, and printmaking. 

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Her several internships included various print, signage, and book layout and first job included online merchandise management and creative at a screen printing company where she was exposed to numerous swag printing techniques.

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For all intents and purposes, Alison's career began and flourished at Myriad Mobile which later rebranded (one of many Alison projects) to Bushel. She began as a UX/UI Design Intern, and within two years was leading the team. She led the team through the rapid innovations that were happening at the time in UX/UI design tools: from exporting assets in Photoshop to a new cornucopia of tools for collaborative online design platforms with specs embedded.

 

The team garnered over 10 regional Addy's awards for their work designing apps, websites, and videos while working with brands such as Bobcat, Aveda, and Midco. During this time Alison secured the firm's first 6-figure design contract while designing the HUD for in-cab Bobcat.

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As lead of the Design team, she was also one of two leads in the Discovery process. Working with over 30 clients in a short succession, she learned a variety of workshopping techniques to uncover and illuminate other's processes. She exercised the skill of asking probing questions, taking in a massive amount of data, and distilling down into the most understandable forms. Working within budgets towards Minimum Viable Products honed a deep sense of focus on impact, testing, and iterating.

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Her ability to uncover process and design human-centric solutions led her on a tour of the organization at Bushel, where she was able to work within or alongside a variety of teams such as Executive Team, Marketing, HR, PMO, Operations, Product, Engineering, and Sales. This exposure gives her a well-rounded view of business operations and how the different functions works together. 

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Some of her favorite projects of this time include upending the entire cadence of product development and instituting a new quarterly Rhythm of Business (a deeply challenging but rewarding project). She was instrumental in planning the communications of several acquisitions and led the pitch deck for several investment rounds along with members of the Executive team. She managed several vendors within the marketing team: overhauling the brand positioning, building websites, and completing several impactful video series. 

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In whatever role or title Alison carried the Bushel brand 'like a backpack'. She was and will always be proud to be part of the team that launched a product and a brand, garnered 45% US market share in under five years, and secured the largest and smallest grain elevators as customers and investors.

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Her nearly nine years at Bushel were a full and deeply rewarding time for Alison where she was given space and grace to grow and learn. Her time came to a close with the invitation to join a newly forming organization with great potential to impact businesses and give opportunity for some of the world's most vulnerable: the refugee population. 

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In six months she has had to bring disparate international teams with distinct messaging more closely together. Created three new websites, led the creation of testimonial video series, overhauled the messaging framework, Sales pitch decks, and turned the tide on a negative online presence to a positive one.