CAREER & TRAINING

I am Marie Raymond with a passion for Web Design & Development and have been loving it for years. Prior to this career, I was a middle school Math Educator in the public school system. I really enjoyed teaching middle school children—I found them to be a very fun and interesting culture.

I discovered Web and Graphic Design while taking a HyperStudio course as an educator (we did that endlessly). This is the equivalent of Power Point for those of us who are Windows people. It was fascinating for me to put together a presentation and so I was hooked. I discovered a Website that was designed for educators to create online games and activities for students. Thus, I created some fun math games and also provided a team Website for my students where they could participate in a contest designed to help them learn about Famous Mathematicians.

I decided to change my career mostly because of a syndrome called "Burn-Out". With the support of my Principal, I made the decision to take one year's leave of absence from school to obtain training for Web Design and Development.

I received my Web Training at Digital Corporation in Reston, VA., where I was the only one in all my classes who designed, developed and launched an actual Website for Old Dominion Baptist Church while in training. I also completed E-Commerce and Oracle training while attending classes at Digital for one year .

My first job as a Web Designer was with Virginia Systems, Inc.(VASI). I had grown tremendously in my profession while employed with VASI in Manassas, VA. Many of the new Web contracts were won as a direct result of the work I produced as a designer/developer.

I invested in my own software training at Northern Virginia Community College for professional development. The hands-on training in Photoshop, Fireworks & Dreamweaver along with my passion for design facilitated my continued growth as a designer. I became lead designer within one year on the job as a result of my talent and skill in producing Websites.

I left my position at VASI to attend ECPI Technical College in Manassas, VA as a full-time student and to pursue an A.A.S. Degreee in Computer & Information Science majoring in IT/Web Development. While into my second term, I was offered aWeb Design/Development position with Orchid Technologies & Management and had to terminate the program due to a conflict with my work schedule. Following employment with Orchid, I became the Corporate Web Architect/Designer of a winning Federal Contracting firm, RS Informations Systems, in McLean, VA where my goal is to continue the progress in Web design and development.

While employed at RSIS, I've learned and administered a complex content server, served as tier 2 web helpdesk for employees, worked with executives to obtain content for the development of the company Intranet, maintain and update Corporate websites and create websites for company business applications and business proposals.