I make complicated things workable for people who don't have time to figure them out alone.
That's been the job for 20+ years. The medium keeps changing — web, accessibility, strategy, now AI. The work underneath it never has.
I started in web design in 1999, back when the field was new enough that nobody had a degree in it. What I did have was a psychology background and computer skills I'd been building since I was eleven. Turns out understanding how people think matters more in this work than anyone expected.
In 2010 I founded AKEA Web Solutions. I thought it was a local Michigan web shop. Over thirteen years it became something else: an accessibility consultancy serving global banks, universities coast to coast, national retailers — and family farms and nonprofits down the street. 800+ projects. The institutions gave us scale. The small organizations kept us honest. The same instinct worked at every level, which is the only reason I trust it.
Somewhere in there I became a member of the W3C Education and Outreach Working Group — the group that turns dense accessibility standards into guidance practitioners can actually use. I was in the room from 2018 to 2023. I also produced and appeared in a nationally-aired segment on web accessibility that ran across CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, PBS, and Fox Business. Both of those are the kind of thing that sounds bigger than it felt at the time. They were just the next interesting problem.
Here's what doesn't show up on a resume.
I don't treat people or projects like a checklist. I want to understand the people at the table as humans first — the business second, the deliverable last. I learned that studying counseling and psychology before I ever wrote a line of code, and I spent ten years in Dale Carnegie training reinforcing it. It's not technique. It's how I actually work.
“I build capability, not dependency.”
Clients own their own infrastructure — their accounts, their domains, all of it. No handcuffs. I'd rather you stay because you want to than because you can't leave. And I tend to get invested in the outcome past the point the invoice justifies, which my accountant has opinions about and I don't intend to change.
“People come back. They refer. Some become friends.”
That's not a strategy — it's just what happens when you actually care whether the thing works.
The same job, pointed at a new problem.
Wow! Such an awesome experience working with Ash at nimblefish. I've been indecisive for years about building my website and now I know why — I hadn't met Ash yet. Ash was so agreeable and invaluable in helping me clarify my message and offerings. He worked with me as the architect and designer of my site but just as importantly as a business consultant. I really cannot say enough good things about my experience.
I also ran a networking event in Lansing for seven years called The Drinking Lunch — third Thursday of the month, no agenda, no speakers, just the right people in a room together. One Christmas an opera singer showed up and sang carols. That was about typical. It's coming back, because people never stopped asking.
The rest of it: I'll fly to Bangor, Maine — or wherever I'm needed — for the right project. I think C-suite executives are just people with bosses and problems, same as everyone. I'm fairly sure my best ideas have come from asking one more question than felt necessary.