Tracy Benson’s Resume

Principal content strategist, Sam’s Club 2018 – present

Leadership role on the user experience design team responsible for creating product messaging and experiences for Sam’s Club, both member and associate-facing. Drive standards across all Sam’s Club platforms while updating the terminology and tone. Manage the content design team.

Writing & editing

Key member in the design process creating standards, guidelines, and messaging the for products.
Create user interface text to simplify and enhance workflow, and improve the experience, with an eye on minimalism and reuse across multiple interface, platforms and emails.

Team leadership & development

Define content standards to support customers’ needs and business goals
Manage and update product copy, including emails and Help
Lead 3+ content designers and support 5+ designers and project teams
Hiring, training and mentoring 3+ content designers
Review, edit and guide content generated by others
Define content guidelines and styles

Senior content strategist, Sam’s Club 2015-2018

Senior role on the user experience design team responsible for creating product messaging for Sam’s Club ecommerce, both website and mobile platforms. Drove standards across all Sam’s Club platforms while updating the terminology and tone. Worked on the redesign on the Help center and emails. In addition, I:

Was a key member in the design process creating standards, guidelines, and messaging for the product.
Wrote user interface text to simplify and enhance workflow, and improve the experience, with an eye on minimalism and reuse.
Defined content standards to support members’ needs and business goals.
Reviewed and edited content generated by others.
Worked with the UX team to deliver a new pattern library, which supported a roll out of the new design and website platform.
Collabrated with the team and stakeholders to develop a consistent process to content delivery.
Supported 10+ designers and project teams.

Lead content designer, PayPal 2014-2015

Lead role on the user experience design team responsible for creating product messaging for PayPal for Business. Drove standards across business team, including updating the terminology and tone for the business. Worked with agile project schedules delivering in two-week sprints.

As a key member in the design process, I created standards, guidelines, and messaging for product. I wrote the interface text, including buttons and error messages, as well as reviewed and edited content generated by others.

Team leadership & system process

Managed and trained a team of 3 content designers.
Helped define content standards to support customers’ needs and business goals.
Managed and updated global content creation and publishing schedule.
Worked with the team to deliver the new content system, which supported a roll out of the new design to over 100 countries simultaneously.
Collaborated with team to develop a consistent process to deliver content in an agile environment.

Principal content strategist, Symantec 2011-2013

Senior role on the online partner marketing team responsible for strategizing and managing content, including page copy, information architecture, web content, and marketing communications.

Key member in the editing process to evangelize and create standards and guidelines. Managed and maintained content to keep it fresh and up-to-date while aligning to company standards. Helped to define information architecture and content to support business goals and customers’ needs. Managed and updated content creation and publishing schedule to manage and organize workloads. Help to define and review metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of content strategies. Co-led the extended team in Europe to create consistent publishing experience.

Led a 5-member team that delivered a new Oracle platform into 12 localized languages. Documented the new content guidelines and process. Built, published, and edited web pages in the content management system.

Senior content strategist, eBay Inc. 2005-2011

Senior role on user experience design team responsible for creating compelling content for eBay sellers. Used methodologies, such as content audits, to create a strong point of view for user interface content for new and updated features. Work with project schedules that include two weeks to one year from scope to live-to-site.

Key member in the design process to create ease-of-use workflows. Wrote user interface text to simplify and enhance workflow, and improve the experience. Reviewed and edited content generated by others as well as managed and maintained content to keep it fresh.

Defined and drove content strategies to support business goals and customers’ needs. Upheld and evangelized content quality standards. Contributed to cross-functional product teams challenged with designing user-friendly interfaces and resolving customer problems. Helped define and review metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of content strategies.

Lead technical writer, Microsoft Corporation 2000-2005

Lead role on user assistance team of writers and editors charged with creating technical documentation for multiple market-leading products including MSN Encarta Online, Encarta Reference Library, Learning Essentials, and Class Server (Learning Management System). Created user interface for new and updated product features. Wrote, edited, coded, and tested user interfaces and Help systems for use by external end-consumer users. Interfaced with 4 different product teams to understand product vision, function, supported scenarios, and workflows for different audiences. Acted as localization project manager for user interface strings and Help files.

Technical writing & editing

Wrote user interfaces to simplify workflow and improve ease-of-use for end users.
Wrote and Edited Help systems for multiple products.
Developed specifications for an internal tool that eased the introduction of XML into the technical writing process by parsing file formats from XML files to CHM files. Tool cut process of creating table of contents and index files from 3 steps to a single step.

Project & team leadership

Created and managed project schedules. Met challenging, mission-critical deadlines to complete eleventh-hour technical reviews and documentation prior to product release.
Created and implemented documentation plans, documentation schedules, and Help specs.
Active contributor to cross-functional product teams challenged with resolving customer problems, designing user-friendly interfaces, and testing product functionality.
Set up and maintained Help servers for MSN Encarta Online and international sites. Installed and tested software on pre-production servers. Created documentation for installation and troubleshooting of software in live production environment. Provided timely updates of code to ensure zero downtime of Help servers.

System development

Led a 5-member team that delivered 7 Help systems, 3 technical documents, and a Web site for Class Server 3.0 in less than 10 months. Product shipped in 12 languages.
Wrote XML templates to speed creation of Help systems for the 4 products. Increased reusability of common content across multiple Help topics, which streamlined editing process, reduced localization costs by 20%, and simplified update procedures for Help topics.
Collaborated with Pane Help team to develop Pane Help Buildkit for internal Web product users. Reviewed specifications for compiler, tested system, and wrote Help system for program interface that served as backend for an on-demand build system that automated management of web-based Help files.

System & process reengineering