Portfolio
Portfolio
Leadership Confidential
Leadership Confidential is a podcast created by leadership and engineering coach Lena Reinhard.
Lena and her anonymous guests have honest, real talk on hard things in technology, finding community, and becoming the engineering leader you can be.
Sly’s role in the podcast includes production assistance, guest support, and social media support.
Starting with Episode 7, Sly joins the podcast as the “bonus host” and assists with introducing the podcast episode and guest, then discussing takeaways and questions at the end of the episode. Because the podcast is created and released with only a team of 3 people, Sly’s involvement in this aspect of the recording improved production times and led to a more consistent episode release schedule.
Sly has their hands in all aspects of podcast production.
Guest Communication
Sly vets guest inquiries, schedule recordings, and handle most aspects of guest communication and coordination. They also send guest bios and final audio to guests for review.
Contractor Coordination
They handle audio review and communication with the podcast editor to troubleshoot problems that arise during editing and to ensure the best episodes are released first.
Pre-Release Prep
Sly completes all the miscellaneous tasks needed to create a thoughtful, value-packed episode. This includes: cleaning up the transcript to fix errors, writing the guest personas for the anonymous guests, writing the episode summary, creating a blog posts from the transcript, and uploading the final audio and episode summary into Spotify.
Social Media Support
When new episodes are released, Sly writes and schedules a corresponding post for LinkedIn. They also spearhead calls-for-guests via LinkedIn for in-person live recordings at conferences, like LeadDev and LeadingEng.
Certified Weirdo
“You're already a weirdo, why not make it official?”
Certified Weirdo is a fun, personal project created by Sly in late 2022 and revamped into a full website in August 2024.
Those who consider themselves a "weirdo" can take a short, free test to become a Certified Weirdo. Those who pass the test are sent an automatically generated Certificate of Weirdness and a link to download the Certified Weirdo badges.
Business owners can also join the Directory of Weirdos to find community and collaboration opportunities with other weirdos.
Sly completed all aspects of this project and continues to maintain it single-handedly.
Website Design and Branding
Sly aimed for fun and quirky branding and a landing page to match. They designed the entire site in Carrd.co.
Graphic Design
The certificate and badge designs were created from scratch based on the website branding and using a combination of Canva and Pixlr.
Automation
One of the most critical elements of this project was setting up reliable, automatic certificate generation. Sly completed this using a combination of Google Forms to capture test answers, Certify’em to generate the certificates, Google Slides to host the certificate template, and Gmail to send the final product to the certificate recipient.
Directory Upkeep
The Directory of Weirdos is hosted in Google Sheets. The directory content is succinct enough to display well on a computer, but detailed enough to provide viewers with ample information. Sly updates the directory with new entries when new submissions come in.
Mindful Moments Card Deck
A thoughtful gift for the clients of Brain Spa.
The Mindful Moments card deck was created primarily as a gift to Brain Spa’s own clients, so they could stay consistent with their mindfulness practices. The original card deck was created several years ago, and, in 2023, the founder of Brain Spa, Miriam Bekkouche, was ready to give it a new look.
The vision for the deck was to include cards that align with 5 types of practices: Purposeful pause, collaborative mindfulness, self-compassion, compassion, and gratitude. In the original design, each card had a similar design for all practice types. In the updated design, each practice type received its own unique, front and back card design representative of the name and purpose of the practice.
Sly worked with Brain Spa to create a revamped card design that fit the company’s updated branding.
Updated Card Designs
Sly began the project by requesting design inspiration photos for their client. Using these photos, Sly used their pattern recognition skills to uncover the design elements present amongst the inspiration photos.
With inspiration in hand, Sly created a sample card that was colorful and relied on visual elements to convey the card's meaning. Once approved by their client, Sly created the remaining cards. Each practice type had its own distinct card back, and those card backs were designed with the purpose of the practice type in mind.
Execution and Revisions
Once all the cards were drafted, Sly reviewed them with their client. They received feedback on the design elements and color choices, and then made revisions based on that feedback. It only took one round of revision to get to the final product!
Printing Support
After the card designs were finalized and the front of the cards (the side with the description of each mindfulness practice) was added, Sly researched different printers for the card deck. They sourced the cards from a company that prints and creates pieces of board games, and they were able to print a whole card deck for an extremely affordable price.
After Sly finished setting up the files on the printer’s website and selecting the correct card type for the project, Brain Spa ordered their new set of cards. The printed card turned out beautifully, there was no need to find an alternative printer, and so the revamp project was complete!
Original card design for the Compassion practice cards.
Revamped card design by Sly, for the Compassion practice cards.
Mama Mindfulness
Mama Mindfulness was originally created as an e-book, then flourished into a larger project.
Mama Mindfulness: Moments of Presence, created by Brain Spa's founder and lead facilitator Miriam Bekkouche, is a collection of stories and practical insights from 23 mothers.
The e-book and Instagram page explore the myriad of ways in which mamas create moments of presence, emotional regulation, body awareness, stillness, consciousness, and contemplation in the lives of their children.
After creating the e-book, Miriam knew she wanted to do more with all the wonderful stories she collected. We teamed up to expand the project. The goal was to create a method for the contributors to easily access the content, invite more mothers to contribute to the project, and to catalog the stories on social media for everyone to read.
Sly used the existing digital product and its corresponding branding to help expand the Mama Mindfulness project.
Website Design
The Mama Mindfulness website was created using Carrd.co. The website serves as a means to direct visitors to the various aspects of the project, including downloading the e-book, viewing the Instagram page, and submitting new stories.
French e-Book Design Update
Sly revamped the original book design for the French version. They simplified the original design while injecting more color to capture the vibe of the branding.
Branded Instagram Posts
All the stories in the e-book were adapted into static Instagram posts, particularly carousels and single-image posts. Sly utilized the existing branding and added visual elements to the Instagram posts to convey a playful, loving, and positive feeling.
Project Strategy
While working on this project, the client was unsure which avenue they wanted to take to catalog the Mama Mindfulness. After a strategy meeting with Sly, they decided to go for a simple landing page and an Instagram page. With Sly’s help, the client made a decision that felt aligned with their needs for the project without the project becoming too burdensome for their limited energy and time.
(Left) French version of the e-book with the cover design and interior pages revamped by Sly.
(Right) English version created by Brain Spa.
This e-book and branding served as a base point for the entire project.
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Get to know who you’re working wtih
Read Sly’s “About” page to get a feel for who they are and how they became a neurodivergent virtual assistant. .