About Tom Roux
From a young age, I always knew I wanted to write, though, candidly, I never quite knew how I’d make a living doing it. Although it’s taken several years and choices among many paths to arrive where I am today, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Writing has always been central to what I do. Choosing the right words, within the given context, for the right audience is where I excel. I have great senses of humor and empathy, which help me to play really well with others (even when we see things differently) and to imagine myself in the role of a specific user trying to complete a given task. I’m a fast learner, I earn the trust of collaborators easily, and I’m quick to spot a grammatical error at a hundred paces.
Here’s my story...
Writing as a Career Path
It all started in seventh grade. I entered the school-wide writing contest — and failed miserably. The next year, having learned from my (many) mistakes, I entered again — and won spectacularly with a touching short story called “Life as a Pair of Tennis Sneakers.” (Spoiler alert: the hero gets tossed into a garbage truck, never to be seen again.) That success inspired me to continue writing, to find my voice, to hone my craft throughout high school and into college.
In college, I studied English with a concentration in Creative Writing and earned my undergraduate degree from the University of Maine. Like many recent college graduates, I didn’t know what to do after I finished, but I’ve always enjoyed being a great writer, and I did know that communicating clearly is valued everywhere. So, eventually, I found my way to an amazing biotech startup in Cambridge, MA, where my writing and editing contributions to the internal newsletter earned me company-wide recognition and support. I realized then that I could have a career as a communicator. So I made it happen and helped to build the Internal Communications department as the first member. Soon after, I earned my Master’s degree in Management and Organizational Communication at Emerson College in the evenings, harnessing my work experience to ground the theories and, in turn, using the new knowledge to sharpen my corporate skills.
Professional Communication Successes
Fast forward 20 years. I built a successful career of creating targeted, effective communications for employee and manager populations at some excellent Greater Boston companies, mostly in biotech and pharmaceuticals. I enjoyed varied, fulfilling roles as an employee, manager, contractor, and consultant (See details on LinkedIn). I learned volumes about my craft, about how to work with a range of people, and about myself.
Simultaneously, I also devoted 10 of those 20 years to a progression of volunteer leadership roles for the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), starting as president of the local Boston chapter and culminating in a three-year term as a director on the International Executive Board. Think of it as a decade-long, unpaid internship in management — in addition to my day job. So I’ve learned a few things about informal leadership, consensus building, collaboration, strategic planning, and managing and developing people.
A Pivot to Content Design (User Experience)
After years of writing for project teams, departments, executives, and the like, I realized I could shift my focus, and my skills, directly to users. I found my second calling in UX. Truth be told, much of my corporate work was UX-related: researching users; collaborating with subject matter experts; writing with the users’ needs in mind; structuring content for optimum readability, scan-ability, and searchability; iterating and improving upon previous versions; measuring campaign open rates, website analytics, and survey responses to gauge efficacy and satisfaction, etc.
Starting in 2011, I had the great fortune to work briefly as a Writer and Content Designer at Intel where I partnered with UX Researchers and the corporate Taxonomist/Intranet Search Guru. We applied usability insights from comprehensive data analytics and user testing observations so I could reorganize and improve underutilized HR content on the employee portal and other channels, to great effect. One month after I had rewritten the template for the “Welcome to Intel” letter sent to all new hires, 100% of recipients said in a poll that they preferred my energetic improvements over the prior, staid version. Little did I realize at the time that that Intel experience would later inspire my career pivot into the world of UX.
From September 2019 to June 2020, I began my career pivot by earning my Certification in User Experience at Bentley University. (I love being a student and have always possessed a growth mindset.) During that period, I freelanced part-time as a content designer, helping small business owners reimagine their websites to better connect with potential clients and improve their users’ experience.
Just as I finished my last projects for my UX Certification in 2020, my big break came. I landed a terrific opportunity as a Content Strategist at CVS Health. Over four years, I worked side by side with a huge team of creative professionals spanning UX, UI, Accessibility, and Research on a variety of web and native mobile projects in the Retail and Health sectors. I learned from others in a mature UX environment and operated in Scaled Agile in two-week sprints. I developed close partnerships with product managers, scrum masters, and developers, all while soliciting and weighing feedback from content peers and stakeholders in design leadership, legal, marketing, SEO, and clinical. I went from being a very green, contract content strategist to an experienced, full-time senior content strategist, to a confident senior content designer.
I’m so glad I decided to switch career paths to content design (a road previously not taken). I’ve found my purpose and look forward to many more years of helping others through my writing, content design and strategy.
Please contact me if you want to discuss opportunities or request my resume.