Portrait of Sarah R. Taylor

Sarah R. Taylor, PhD

Process architect and marketing leader. I find inefficiencies, automate them away, and connect disparate tools.

Summary

I'm a data-driven problem-solver working at the intersection of technology, marketing, and human behavior. I started in academia, doing research and teaching, and left to get my hands on real-world problems. Since then, I've worked on an electronics manufacturing floor, served as the technical communicator for a retail technology company, and run marketing and sales for a B2B software company. What ties them together: figuring out how people and systems actually behave, then building something that capitalizes on the strengths of each while getting rid of the tedious parts.

Career Timeline

Head of Marketing, TimeForge Labor

Lubbock, Texas (remote) · Aug 2020 to Present

  • Own the marketing function end to end for a B2B labor-management platform: strategy, content, SEO, and go-to-market execution.
  • Serve as the company's de facto process architect: automating recurring workflows with n8n and REST APIs, and replacing manual handoffs with systems that run themselves.
  • Write the company's content at every level, from product documentation to long-form marketing pieces.
  • Run marketing on a minimal budget by building tools instead of buying them.

Technical Communicator, TRUNO Retail Technology Solutions

Lubbock, Texas · May 2017 to Aug 2020

  • Translated complex retail technology into clear documentation for customers and internal teams.
  • Led a company-wide transition from an outdated knowledge base to an online system already included in the existing software stack, saving the cost of a separate, non-integrated product.
  • Earned the Certified Professional Technical Communicator credential (Society for Technical Communication, 2017).

Instructor and Undergraduate Mentor, Northwestern University

Chicago, Illinois · Aug 2008 to Aug 2015

  • Taught courses for the School of Education and Social Policy, Global and Public Health, Chicago Field Studies, the School of Professional Studies, and the Department of Anthropology.
  • Mentored students in local internships and service learning programs.

Earlier roles

2002 to 2016

Ran a surface-mount (SMT) production line in Arkansas; conducted community health research and served as an academic liaison in Chicago; taught and assisted research at the University of Colorado Boulder; and coordinated a paleoecology laboratory at the University of Arkansas.

Education

PhD / MPH, Medical Anthropology, Northwestern University

2008 to 2015

NSF Graduate Research Fellow (2007 to 2010); NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant; peer-reviewed publications in public health and nutrition

MA, Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder

2005 to 2008

4.0 GPA; departmental Distinguished Graduate

BA, Anthropology, University of Arkansas

2000 to 2005

Magna cum Laude

Technologies

Personal Projects

These projects are where a lot of my experimentation and learning happens: new tools, new stacks, and problems my day job doesn't hand me. They're kept intentionally link-free here, but I'm happy to share links, code, and war stories in conversation.

Multiplayer text-based game world

A persistent multiplayer world built in Python, with Django and PostgreSQL handling the data layer. I design the game systems, write the tooling that makes building content faster, and run the infrastructure underneath, from the Linux server to the secure tunnel that publishes it.

Self-hosted operations dashboard

A Dockerized Node.js dashboard that pulls a dozen services (analytics, project boards, content pipelines, uptime checks) into a single view, secured behind Cloudflare Zero Trust, with scheduled fetchers and API integrations (Google APIs among them) doing the legwork.

Open-source accessibility utility

A small tool that speaks written text aloud so authors can hear their work the way screen reader users will, and adjust accordingly.

Publication website and custom WordPress plugins

A special-interest publication I run end to end on WordPress: writing, editing, SEO, and four custom plugins I built for events, custom forms, structured data, and AI-assisted workflows.

Community resource library

A reference and documentation site for a niche online community, updated almost daily, built to load instantly and cost almost nothing to host.