A Highly Experienced Team
Wired Moon core associates are highly skilled, experienced professionals who demonstrate a passion for creating excellence while providing ethical, original, intelligent solutions for your business and creative challenges. We also work with a wide range of specialty contractors who supply specific consulting services our clients may need.
Principals
Chris Madison
Principal and Project Manager
Chris' career in video and internet development spans twenty-five years. Chris has deep expertise in media development, e-learning and web site development. Her passion in web work, whether designing an e-commerce, e-learning or informational site, is creating successful web strategies that support the goals of the organization and the site users. Experience tells her that project goals for a website are derived from these two explorations.
Prior to founding Wired Moon, she was the Director of Business Development for Bright Wire, Inc., a high-end design house in San Francisco. Chris also served as the Director of Learning Technologies for Human Code, an interactive development company, and as a Manager of Client Relations in Learning Services at Sapient, a large San Francisco business and technology consultancy.
Before to returning to industry, Chris co-managed Stanford MediaWorks, part of the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD) at Stanford University. At MediaWorks, she opened and managed successive video, CD-ROM and Internet development groups. Chris served as the Executive Producer on over 50 major web sites and interactive projects at Stanford several of which won major industry awards. She also produced a wide range of documentary and informational video programs.
Chris was a Lecturer at Stanford University in the Stanford University Continuing Studies Program where she taught a number of courses on creating successful web strategies, qualitative user research and successful web site design as well as planning the Information and Web Technologies curriculum for several years.
Education
Chris received her B.A. in Studio Art from Scripps College of the Claremont Colleges and has completed extensive coursework for her M.F.A.
Emery Gordon
Principal, Technical Lead
Emery Gordon ’s specialty lies in database design and application development, with more than 30 years of experience in analysis, development, installation and support in a wide range of databases, software languages, and Internet applications. Emery brings comprehensive understanding of many hardware and software platforms to each project he oversees. This includes more than 12 years of experience using the Oracle tool set and extensive knowledge of business practices and software requirements of various industries and professional practices. As an expert user interface designer, Emery develops software and Internet projects at Roche Bioscience, Pacific Gas and Electric, Chevron, and other Bay Area corporations. Emery managed EDP Support Services, developing and installing minicomputer-based business systems in hundreds of midsize companies, such as Galoob Toys and University of California Bookstore, among others.
Education
Emery has a B.S. in Physics from the University of California at Los Angeles.
Core Team
Marianne Bishop
Project Manager
Marianne’s career as a project manager began over ten years ago. She has managed the development of consumer focused and business-to-business web initiatives for Fortune 500 companies including Hewlett Packard, Walt Disney, and Seagate Technologies.
Additionally, she has worked with online companies including eTrade and lowermybills.com.
Projects she has managed range from “soup to nuts” web development projects, large scale quality assurance projects, usability tests, demos for trade shows and other specially targeted audiences, and mission critical consumer web initiatives.
Marianne has a strong commitment to each client’s success throughout the development process.
In addition to traditional project management tasks including budget analysis, resource allocation and scheduling issues, she strives to create a collaborative working partnership with clients.
Her goals are to keep project schedules and budgets on track while always keeping project objectives in sight. Working closely with clients to ensure that each step of the development process is clearly defined and understood helps ensure successful projects.
Education
Marianne received her B.A. in Rhetoric and Communication from the University of California at Davis.
Maria Black
Experience Designer, Information Architect
Maria has a wide range of experience in usability and interaction design. She has worked as a Senior Interaction Designer for the Bank of America successfully integrating disparate content from disparate sites into a new Global Treasury Services portal for corporate clients. She also developed the strategic plan for Bank of America for the redesign of the university recruiting site through extensive competitive analysis and user studies. Maria worked with Yodlee performing a usability inspection on a prototype of a new banking product as well as creating usability plans for a consumer banking application. She also has extensive experience in the educational software realm testing a learning management system and saving considerable costs and time in the product development cycle. She is also an accomplished information architect and user interface designer working for firms such as State Farm Insurance, Ahsoon Technologies, Follett Corporation and others.
Education
Maria has an MIS with an emphasis in Human-Computer Interaction from Indiana University. She received her B.A. from Oberlin College.
Wes Breazell
Visual and User Interface Design
During Wes' nine-year professional career, he has designed web sites for many of Silicon Valley’s Fortune 500 companies. Adobe challenged Wes to design their ActiveShare web site so it reached out to the masses and introduced to those who were new to digital imaging, Adobe's rich set of applications, within the context of an open, non-intimidating experience. Within only one week of offering product downloads, this site prompted more than 15,000 visitors to download ActiveShare software.
Wes’ natural artistic abilities motivated him to explore the world of computer graphics. Later, he attended the San Francisco Academy of Arts, completing courses in 3D modeling, color theory, photography, CAD, and figure drawing, while in the 3D modeling and animation degree program. At the 1994 Seybold Conference, Wes won the first place award in the Third Annual Digital Art Contest.
Today, Wes has an impressive gallery of design work that demonstrates his ability to deliver original artwork with visual impact. Besides web site design, Wes has designed packaging, marketing materials, trade show posters, newsletters, brochures and presentationware, print ads, and he is one of a few graphic designers able to create mechanical drawings by hand.
Education
San Francisco Academy of Arts
Michael Hopkins
Software Design, Information Architect and User Interface Designer
Mike Hopkins ’ career in the IT industry spans more than 25 years, and focuses on substantial experience in senior management and technical roles. His experience with project management, systems design and development, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software and database/data warehouse applications allows him to serve high-tech startups as well as larger, well-established firms. Mike’s expertise is rooted in experience and covers the gamut of corporate application requirements. From implementing manufacturing and financial systems in 1978 to successfully guiding companies through the hazards of implementing or converting ERP systems today, Mike is an asset to any team he assists.
Mike’s experience includes serving as Vice President Information Systems at a leading company in the video-on-demand industry, where he oversaw responsibility for all aspects of IT application development, implementation and maintenance (as well as network and data center operations). He and his staff overhauled the company’s worldwide data network, implemented Oracle Financials, built a data warehouse system of substantial commercial value and developed numerous tactical and strategic information systems to serve the rapidly changing corporate needs of this company.
Education
Mike has a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley
Himanshu Shakhar (Blakish)
Web Developer, Drupal Module developer, Drupal “Themer”
Blakish has over 7 years of experience in web development working with the following technologies: PHP, MySQL, Xml, Ajax, Json, JavaScript, CSS, XHTML, AS3 (flash). He has deep expertise in Drupal website development, theming and module development. Blakish have developed more than 100 websites in Drupal and he has used CCK and Views extensively. He has extensive experience with CCK and Views and Taxonomy modules that play an important role in Drupal-based websites.
Blakish has very extensive experience with theming (Zen, phptemplate). He has an excellent background in module development and Flash services and customizing modules to meet project requirements. He has a keen sense for selecting the right modules to meet client needs and understands the relationship and interactions between the modules. Blakish also has excellent experience in Drupal profile creation. He’s worked on such sites as Greencodetech, (http://greencodetech.com), Beyond the Bride (http://www.beyondthebride.com.au), Comprehensive Behavior Healthcare, Inc. (http://www.cbhcare.com) as well as Stanford sites such as the Vaden Intranet, IRiSS and IPS.
Education
B.S. in Information Technology, Oracle Certified from CDAC-Pune (India)
Tammy Shanker
User Experience & Usability Researcher
Tammy has a background in user experience and usability research as well as training & development. She worked as a Senior Research Associate for Leapfrog, designing and conducting consumer product testing and market research studies for children's toys. In addition to product testing, she conducted ethnographic and longitudinal studies to help determine the long-term use patterns and influence of products. While at Leapfrog, she also spearheaded an online survey research initiative to reach additional consumers and parents.
Prior to Leapfrog, Tammy was the Manager of Training & Career Development at Patelco Credit Union. While at Patelco she led the corportate training effort for over 400 employees. She updated the online training program, instituted a management training program and converted the New Employee Orientation from paper to web.
Tammy has worked for both small and large companies and with clients ranging from boutique toy developers to Fortune 500 corporations. She has training and experience as a facilitator/moderator for meetings, workshops, focus groups, interviews, etc.
Education
Tammy has an M.S. in Media Arts & Sciences from MIT and a B.S. in Cognitive Science with a Specialization in Computing from UCLA.
Kerstin Sjoquist
Information architecture, usability testing, web production
As information architect and usability specialist, Kerstin draws from over twelve years of experience in the development of informational and instructional web sites. She has worked on over sixty sites of varying size, focusing on the balance between the user experience and the sponsoring organization’s goals.
Prior to joining Wired Moon, Kerstin worked for Sapient as an Information Architect and Human Code as Senior Producer/Information Architect within their Learning Technologies group. Prior experience also includes working at Stanford University’s MediaWorks as Production Manager and Lead Information Architect/Usability Specialist. Kerstin was also a Lecturer at Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program where she has taught several courses on web development and usability.
Education
Kerstin was trained at Julliard and has a B.A. from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is currently enrolled in a Master's Degree program.
Katy Smith
Drupal Developer
Katy has an extensive background in applications development, standards compliancy, and marketing by design. She is also the founder of eTree Enterprises, LLC., a programming and development firm on the East Coast. Katy came to us with an impressive list of clientele and carries a reputation in the IT world as one of the best resources for cross-browser compatibility issues.
Katy's primary interest is in database programming and content management systems using valid XHTML in Coldfusion or PHP. In response to consumer demand, she applied her experience in hand-coding CMS systems to include a wide variety of pre-packaged solutions such as Drupal, Typo3, WordPress, and Moveable Type into her skill set. She also has background in accessibility, search engine optimization, graphics design, and cyberspace law and ethics. Katy's accomplishments in her fields of expertise have been formally given accolades by entities such as the Association of Internet Technology Professionals and the Center for Digital Government.
Education
A.A.S. in Web Design & Development Technology from Texas State Technical College of Waco.
