Who is Dawn Murphy
I stumbled across technical writing quite by accident. I was a clean room technician in the high-tech field of microelectronics and working toward a degree in archaeology. However, I realized I should channel my academic interest into something more practical that combined my writing talent, organizational skills and my technical background.
I wasn’t sure there was a career path that combined these skills but soon found several local colleges that offered technical communications as a degree program. I’d never met a technical writer and was unaware the job title even existed. I still have people ask me what a technical writer does so it would appear I wasn’t the only one in the dark.
Since receiving my Bachelor of Arts in the Technical Communications program at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, I have worked as a Technical Writer for Target Corporation, IBM, Northwest Airlines and Ameriprise Financial, just to name a few. Within those corporations I’ve designed, written and edited IT security documentation, the ubiquitous SOPs, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets (unlike most people I actually enjoy working on Excel spreadsheets – I am the queen of all things list-y and in their proper order), Visio drawings and on line documentation maintenance.