Nancy Ging

Nancy Ging, founder of Turtle Island Web Design, has a wide range of interests and a low tolerance for boredom. She has accumulated an unusually broad résumé of skills and experience which she brings to the art of web design and Internet training:

Computer Science

Computers have been in the household since Nancy's first home built analog computer. She pursued several years of programming courses in college, and has often enjoyed creating applications for herself as a hobby. This has given her a solid base for learning new skills such as HTML, CGI scripting, and JavaScript coding. She has nearly always used computers in the workplace, and has been through upgrading transitions in companies of various sizes. She is quite familiar with the difficulties of implementing new systems and procedures.

Graphic Arts

Nancy has several years of work experience in graphic design, typesetting, and layout for both newspapers and fine printing companies. She has some formal training in art, and has always enjoyed drawing and painting as an avocation. She has operated part time photo and video studios at various times. She now enjoys exploring the possibilities with graphics software and new web techniques such as Flash (Shockwave) and SVG.

Psychology

Nancy's formal training is a Master's degree in clinical psychology. She has worked as a therapist, both in community mental health centers and in private practice. She has also done consulting for mental health consumer and family organizations. Her knowledge of psychology and experience working with groups is helpful in designing marketing strategies and working with corporate teams.

Teaching

Training people has been part of Nancy's life since she started volunteer teaching for the American Heart Association and the American Red Cross in her early 20s. Later, she designed and presented workshops, seminars and training sessions as an adjunct to her counseling work. Through her bookstore (see Retail, below) she both sponsored and led classes on a wide variety of subjects. She has been invited to speak at schools, churches, and civic organizations. Now Nancy applies these skills to helping people understand and utilize the Internet.

Business Management

Nancy has worked in middle management for both large and small corporations, and has owned several businesses of her own. As a result she has a practical understanding of the needs of many kinds of businesses--manufacturing, research, services, etc. She is familiar with both financial and cost accounting procedures, and can help you determine the potential cost-effectiveness of a web site or intranet solution.

Sales and Marketing

Another part of Nancy's repertoire includes many kinds of sales. She has earned a living at various times in her life selling products ranging from newspaper advertising to commercial fishing vessels. Nancy helped develop marketing strategies for other businesses while selling advertising, and has always managed the promotion and marketing of her own businesses.

Retail

For five years prior to starting Turtle Island Web Design, Nancy owned and operated a retail book store. She started the business from scratch, and raced to keep up as the business doubled in size every year. She eventually sold the store for a profit. Besides selling books, sidelines and consignments, the store included an art gallery with regularly scheduled artist events, and a meeting room for sponsoring classes, lectures and readings. Nancy also wrote, designed, and published a bimonthly newsletter for the store which received kudos from several traveling authors. Nancy's organizational abilities were the outstanding feature of these years, and continue to contribute to the quality of her current efforts.

Writing

The written word has been a natural complement to Nancy's speaking and educating skills. She has worked as a newspaper journalist, and occasionally done freelancing for various periodicals. When working for larger companies, she also helped develop and write technical manuals. She is able to match her writing style to the message being conveyed.

In Short--

Nancy is a true Renaissance person in terms of interests and abilities. She is able to bring a balanced combination of talents to her web designs that is rare in the field--technical computer skills blended with the aesthetic eye of an artist, the marketing sense of a sales representative, and the hard-headed practicality of a business owner. Add to this her insatiable curiosity, her love of learning, and her adeptness at learning quickly--desirable qualities for anyone in an Internet-related business in these times of mercurial change.