A Life Built Around Learning, Creating and Teaching

I am Faydra D. Fields, known across the web as Faydra Deon. I am a disabled U.S. Army veteran, a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., a web designer, developer and instructor, a computer-applications trainer, a graphic designer, an image editor and a “Most-Things-Web Consultant.” I am also a jigsaw-puzzle solver and maker, a lifelong learner and someone who is nearly always creating something. My faith is central to who I am, and I describe myself first as a follower of Christ. The titles may sound wide-ranging, but they are connected by one consistent thread: I like learning how things work, using that knowledge to build useful things and teaching other people how to do the same. I have been working with computers since I was 14, designing and developing for the web since 1999 and working independently and teaching web-related subjects since leaving active military service in 2006. I have never been especially comfortable with the label “web guru.” Technology is too broad and changes too quickly for anyone to know everything. “Most-Things-Web Consultant” is both more honest and more useful. My experience spans the practical work behind websites and digital content: planning, design, development, content management, graphics, image editing, publishing, search visibility, social media, accessibility, performance and training. I do and teach what I love, and I love what I teach and do.

From Pine Bluff to Tulsa

I was born on October 24, 1968, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. When I was nine, my parents moved my older sister, my younger brother and me to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Both of my parents eventually retired after more than 30 years as educators, so teaching was never an abstract profession in our household. It was a visible example of service, discipline and lifelong commitment. My father also had the foresight to involve all three of us with computers while I was in middle school. I began working with computers at 14, long before most people expected them to become part of everyday life. That early exposure stayed with me and later shaped the specialty I chose in the Army as well as the career I built after military service. I graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Tulsa in 1987. The school’s magnet program and its Advanced Placement classes gave me a demanding academic foundation. My work in high school earned me academic, band, track and softball scholarships to Kentucky State University, where I entered the Whitney Young Scholars Program as an honors student.

Kentucky State, Howard University and Finding the Right Challenge

I spent two years in Kentucky State University’s honors program. When that period ended and I moved into the regular university curriculum, I found that much of the material repeated subjects I had already encountered in my magnet-school and Advanced Placement classes. In the fall of 1989, I pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. That was an important achievement and remains part of my identity, but it did not solve the larger problem: I needed an academic environment that challenged me. After three years at Kentucky State, I transferred to Howard University. I left my Kentucky State scholarships behind, but transferring proved to be the right higher-education decision for me. I earned an academic scholarship after my first semester at Howard, worked three part-time jobs while attending school full time and used student loans to cover the remaining cost of my education. My major also opened the door to two especially valuable internships, one with the Democratic National Committee and another with the Anti-Defamation League. I graduated magna cum laude from Howard University in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts in African-American Studies and a minor in American History.

Language, Captioning and the Classroom

My command of grammar, spelling and punctuation led to a position as a Live Display Captioner at the National Captioning Institute in Vienna, Virginia. About seven months after I began, I learned that I was the only Live Display Captioner on staff who did not hold an English degree. I had not known that an English degree was ordinarily expected. I qualified because I performed well enough on the written examination. That experience reinforced the seriousness with which I approach language. Clear writing is not cosmetic. Punctuation, structure and word choice determine whether meaning reaches the reader intact. That same respect for clarity later shaped my work as an editor, writer, instructor and web professional. In 1996, I returned to Oklahoma and became an eighth-grade American Studies teacher. I loved the work and I loved my students. Teaching had always felt like a calling, and I expected to remain in the classroom for 30 years, following the example set by my parents. A practical financial decision changed the route, though not the calling.

Military Service and the Beginning of My Web Career

I had accumulated approximately $30,000 in student loans while completing my degree. When I learned that the Army offered student-loan repayment, I decided to enlist rather than spend the next 15 years paying the debt myself. At age 30, I became an Information Systems Operator Analyst. The Army paid the eligible loans during my first three years of service. My military career took me to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, Fort Gordon and Fort Benning in Georgia, Taegu in South Korea and finally the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. My resume records service from September 1999 through May 2009, including active-duty technical assignments followed by service as a chaplain candidate. I am now a disabled veteran. During my years in information systems, I served as webmaster for the School of Information Technology at Fort Gordon and as a systems administrator there. My working knowledge included IIS, ASP, Active Directory, Exchange, SQL and Systems Management Server. I also served as a Certificate Authority Workstation subject-matter expert, a COMSEC custodian and a system administrator for AUTODIN/DMS messaging systems. At the Joint Staff Multimedia Center at the Pentagon, I administered Virage, a digital asset-management system, and ScheduAll, a production-scheduling system. I also trained subordinates in software applications and computer hardware. Those assignments did more than give me technical experience. They taught me to work where reliability, security, documentation and clear communication matter. My formal journey as a graphic designer, web designer, developer and image editor began in 1999 while I was a soldier. The Army gave me an environment in which technical systems, visual communication and training could become parts of the same professional practice.

Building an Independent Web and Training Career

After leaving active duty in 2006, I became a corporate trainer in computer applications, web languages and web production. That move allowed me to combine two enduring interests: computers and teaching. Through Higher Dimensions Computer Training Solutions, established in 2005, I have provided computer-application, web-design, web-development and social-media training. Through Hyperlinks Website Enhancement Services, I have worked as a full-time freelance website designer and developer since April 2006. I design and develop both static and dynamic websites for individuals, businesses and organizations. My work has included HTML and CSS sites as well as content-management systems such as WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal and MODX. Depending on the project, I also create vector graphics, edit and prepare images, develop publications, work with databases and scripting languages and help clients address search-engine optimization, social-media marketing, user experience, user-interface design, accessibility and page-speed performance. My technical background includes HTML5, CSS2 and CSS3, XHTML, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, SQL, VBScript/ASP and XML. I have worked with Microsoft Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Project and Visio as well as Adobe Acrobat, After Effects, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, Muse, Premiere and Photoshop. I have also used GIMP and Inkscape. The list reflects years of adapting to the tools appropriate to a project, not loyalty to a single platform. I have worked through Upwork and directly with clients. My work has ranged from helping individuals and small organizations establish a web presence to designing and implementing a comprehensive site for an academic psychiatry residency program. In a LinkedIn recommendation, a Harvard Medical School assistant professor described that project as a beautiful website delivered with a short turnaround and noted my ability to communicate just as comfortably with a web-development novice as with a technically experienced collaborator. That ability to translate between technical and nontechnical people is one of the most useful skills I bring to client work. Freelancing is not a sideline for me. It is full-time work, and I have often kept a schedule that begins around 5:00 a.m. Eastern and continues until about 9:00 p.m., sometimes beyond midnight. If I am not working with websites, graphics or images, I am often teaching someone else how to work with them. I am fortunate to make a living doing work I genuinely enjoy—even when my office attire is what I jokingly call my “work clothes”: pajamas.

WordPress Experience

WordPress has been a major part of my work since 2009. I have built and maintained my own WordPress sites as well as sites for a select group of clients. Based on the time I have spent developing, troubleshooting, maintaining and teaching the platform, I estimate that I have accumulated roughly 30,000 hours of WordPress-related experience. I have taught WordPress in person, through live virtual sessions and through self-paced video tutorials. At Northern Virginia Community College, Websites with WordPress Bootcamp became part of the broader web-design curriculum I taught. I have also written about WordPress, web design and web development for other websites, including the GoDaddy blog under the name Faydra Deon. My approach to WordPress is practical. I am interested in what a site needs to accomplish, what the owner can realistically maintain and which tools solve the problem without creating unnecessary complexity. That same practical approach informs my work across other content-management systems and web technologies.

Teaching Adults, College Students and Working Professionals

From April 2006 through May 2019, I fulfilled contract-training assignments through The Training Associates. My assignments included introductory, intermediate and advanced Microsoft Word instruction as well as Adobe Captivate training. I trained individuals and organizations both in person and online, including learners creating websites for personal, business and government use. From February 2011 through March 2018, I taught in the Workforce Development Division at Northern Virginia Community College’s Annandale and Woodbridge campuses. At times I taught seven classes each semester, including summers, across the courses that formed the Web Design Fundamentals certificate program. My subjects included Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, HTML5 and CSS3, Bootstrap, Adobe Muse and Websites with WordPress Bootcamp. I also taught social media, search-engine optimization and grammar-related classes, including Facebook, Twitter and Google+ for Absolute Beginners, H.O.T. (Hands-On Training) for Web Designers and Getting Good at Grammar. I began teaching online courses for NOVA in 2017. NOVA featured me in its Spring 2015 course catalog as a Web Design Instructor. The profile described me as someone who had been using the Internet before many of my relatives and friends knew about the World Wide Web, and it highlighted my combined experience as a webmaster, designer, developer, applications trainer, blogger, author and publisher. That catalog also documented my instruction in Adobe Photoshop Level I and Adobe Illustrator Level I. From July 2018 through February 2019, I served as an adjunct professor at The Art Institute of Virginia Beach. I taught students pursuing associate and bachelor’s degrees in graphic and web design as well as non-majors learning the fundamentals. My courses covered HTML5, CSS3, Bootstrap, Adobe Muse, WordPress, interface design, digital color theory and UX/UI design. From January 2019 through 2021, I served as an online adjunct professor at Southeast Arkansas College, where I taught a 16-week social-media course. Across these roles, the subject matter has changed with technology, but the teaching goal has remained the same: make unfamiliar tools understandable, give learners enough context to make sound decisions and help them leave with skills they can actually use.

An Early Voice in Social Media

Long before social media became a standard business requirement, I was an active blogger, social-media commentator and trainer. I was known online by my first and middle names, Faydra Deon, and described myself at the time as a follower of Christ, the “Queen of Questions (& Grammar),” a computer-applications trainer, website designer, WordPress tipster and customizer, an AKA and the DC Social Media Examiner. In August 2010, Black Web 2.0 named me No. 71 on its list of “The 100 Most Powerful Black Women on Twitter.” The publication said it compiled the ranking using Klout and TwitterGrader, measuring factors that included followers, retweets and appearances on user lists. At the time, my account was shown with 11,236 followers, 10,371 accounts followed, 81,296 updates and 303 list memberships. The list placed me among entertainers, journalists, authors, entrepreneurs and public figures whose influence reflected the still-emerging culture of Twitter. The recognition captured a particular moment in the development of the social web. My presence was not built around celebrity. It grew from conversation, instruction, questions, grammar, WordPress knowledge and a willingness to share useful information. That same instinct—to learn publicly, explain clearly and help other people use technology with more confidence—continues to define my work.

Creativity Beyond Client Websites

I have always had interests that reach beyond conventional website work. I am a graphic designer and image editor, a crafter and a jigsaw-puzzle solver and maker. I enjoy the point where technical precision meets visual play: arranging shapes, working with color, turning an idea into a tool and figuring out why a design behaves the way it does. My earlier web projects reflected that range. A feature image from “The Funky Gemini,” an about-music video blog, shows a bright, unconventional visual style built around music, color and personality. The site’s message—“Fish don’t need permission to swim… You don’t need permission to be amazing!”—suited the independent spirit behind the project. Whether I am creating a business website, a digital publication, a puzzle-making tool or a craft project, I am most engaged when the work gives me something to solve and something tangible to make.

The Work Continues

My career has never followed a narrow path. I have been an American Studies teacher, a captioner, a soldier, a systems administrator, a webmaster, a corporate trainer, an adjunct professor, a designer, a developer, a consultant and a business owner. Rather than seeing those roles as separate lives, I see them as layers of the same life. Each one strengthened my ability to understand information, organize it, communicate it and make it useful to someone else. Today, I continue to work as a full-time independent web designer and developer, maintain selected client sites, build and refine my own projects and teach others. I still approach technology with the curiosity of the 14-year-old whose father introduced her to computers and with the seriousness of the teacher who wants every learner to understand. I ask a great many questions, care deeply about the details and believe that good work should be both functional and understandable. I have been fortunate to make a career from the intersection of things I love: computers, teaching, design, language and problem-solving. The tools will keep changing. My purpose has remained remarkably steady.