Sara Peters

Queens, NY USA
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Professional Experience

A writer, editor, designer, journalist, researcher, storyteller, conference planner, and TEDMED speaker with 13 years of editorial experience, I specialize in ripping apart complex topics and piecing them back together in digestible pieces with a witty style. A content strategist with eight years of management experience, I excel at running multiple projects and leading collaborative teams. creative editorial leader — emerging media expert who tripled audience engagement — storyteller — manager of dynamic, collaborative teams — brand-savvy multi-platform content strategist — journalist — witty writer — brand-savvy graphic designer — persnickety copyeditor — community builder — data analytics whiz — face of organization on stage and on camera — social media maven — TEDMED speaker — conference planner

Expertise

Editor
13 Years
Writer
14 Years
Designer
12 Years

Specialty

Technology
8 Years
Theater
16 Years
Other, Specify
5 Years

Industries


Newspaper - Local/Regional
2 Years
Academia Other
3 Years
Professional Journal
8 Years

Total Media Industry Experience

13 Years

Corporate Client List (# assignments last 2 yrs)

Alliance Repertory Theater Company (10+), Brad Lawrence, billyjoesboy.com (1-2)

Other Work History

Senior Editor, Computer Security Institute, United Business Media Communications Associate, School of Engineering and Applied Science, Princeton University Social Editor, Cranbury Press and South Brunwsick Post

Computer Skills

Design tools: Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. Content management platforms: including Drupal, WordPress, SquareSpace, ContentCenter, and TypePad. Analytics tools: including Google Analytics and Omniture SiteCatalyst

Showcase

Video

This is a segment of a Google+ Hangout the editorial team held to debate and predict what technology innovations would win the next round of match-ups in our E2 Tournament of IT Revolutionaries.
Part I of a three-part video documentary series that I directed about the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen).
This is a live video interview with the NBA's Chief Information Officer about the tech behind the new NBA Stats site. We also took questions from the audience participating in the lively text chat happening during the show.
Filmed at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, I interviewed the chief information officer of the US Tennis Association about the technology needed on and off the courts during the US Open tournament.
Virtualization presents the risk of putting all your eggs in one basket, but also offers the safety of putting each egg in its own basket.
Mozilla and Google will no longer accept any SSL certificates issued by DigiNotar...but why not just stop accepting SSL certificates altogether?
Video interview with two charmingly irreverant speakers at the Black Hat 2008 conference about some of the lesser-known risks of social networking.
This is a video blog discussing the implications of the journal Egyptological's decision to shut itself down indefinitely after being the victim of hacktivists' persistent denial-of-service attacks. This video blog was also picked up by an Egyptology Website.
Publishers want libraries' copies of e-books to expire after a limited number of reads.
Live video interview with the chief information officer of the University of Massachusetts.
The Beastie Boys handled it gracefully when a song got leaked. What can they teach us about data breach response and online content distribution?
Using Xtranormal's free text-to-movie service, I created this short animated video honoring my husband, and his ardent love of sandwiches.

Design

Poster for production of "Closer," quoting a line from the show. The image of a Newton's Cradle is also a reference to a line in the play; the actors' ghostly faces are imposed onto the metal balls to represent the characters' inescapable effects on each others' lives.
This is a quirky illustration of the happy couple that was used on all wedding collateral--invitations, table placement cards...even the cake.
A 40-page PDF document meant to be read onscreen or downloaded and printed. I designed this document, which contains over 30 graphs that I illustrated.
This was the final piece of a 10-part series about how to become a chief information officer. I used vintage, black-and-white photos of children convey the message "when I grow up I want to be a CIO," with a bit of timeless class and whimsy.

Writing: Non-Tech

Being penniless is no reason not to wear a $25,000 diamond necklace...at least for a few minutes. In this post I point out three of the best window shopping neighborhoods in the city, and provide the rules to make sure that you have a fantastic time while not spending a penny.
Yay! According to the Department of Labor, unemployment rates in New York went down... but the big city is still suffering more than the rest of the state.
A person must have an appropriate soundtrack to serve as a backdrop for their emotional trek from shock to acceptance. This piece presents my personal unemployment playlist.
This blog explains 1) how New York State calculates how much money will be in an individual's unemployment check, 2) why the average New York City resident will never get what they're due, and 3) how the maximum unemployment benefits won't cover the monthly rent on a one-bedroom apartment in Harlem.
When considering moving from a New York apartment to a Hooverville shanty, here are some preparations to make--including the importance of packing a harmonica.
Part sports page, part women's magazine, this blog post covers the thrilling blow-by-blows of two simultaneous matches in the 2010 World Cup (U.S.-Algeria and England-Slovenia) and waves a fond goodbye to the handsome men whose teams were eliminated.

Research Reports

Although software security researchers can find security holes in software, write viruses to exploit the holes and publicly publish their findings to their hearts' content, Web security researchers can go to prison for simply looking for Web site vulnerabilities, much less disclosing them publicly.
This survey is among the most widely quoted pieces of cybersecurity research. I conducted the research, wrote the report, illustrated the graphs, designed the document, presented the findings in a public Webcast, answered reporters' questions and managed this entire project, soup to nuts.

Writing: Technology

In this blog piece I introduce the Windows 7 operating system, defend its ill-tempered older sister Windows Vista, and acknowledge that Victorian gentlemen have little regard for my opinions.
According to new research, bank customers' poor PIN selection habits give wallet thieves an 8.9 percent chance of guessing an ATM PIN correctly.
"Two wrongs don't make a right" is a lesson that some telecommunications providers, governments, and hacking groups haven't yet learned.
A breach at RSA -- the security company that provides SecurID -- may leave many companies wondering what to do to stay secure.
SAP and the NBA have paired up to create NBA.com/Stats, where fans can easily crunch the numbers for the whole league. The NBA's chief information officer spoke more about the technology during a live video show we held on the last day of the NBA's regular season.
Even though massive open online courses are unprofitable and don't replace traditional classes, they're worth a university CIO's time. This post includes interviews from the people leading online education at the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Edinburgh.
To coincide with the March Madness of the NCAA basketball tournament, we created our own Tournament of IT Revolutionaries -- complete with its own bracket and video clips from the secret Google + Hangout the editors held to debate and decide what made it into the tournament.
The shortage of healthcare IT professionals has worsened, and CIOs' hiring practices are partly to blame.
To understand e-voting security, one must viciously hack through a thicket of semantics to find out what e-voting proponents and opponents are truly arguing about so vociferously. In this blog piece I attempt to save readers the effort and outline the gist of the debate.
All trading on the stock market comes with risk. The potential for technological errors and disruptions in stock exchanges is now just a standard variable in the risk equation. This piece includes an interview with the former CIO of NYSE Euronext (current CIO of FX Alliance).
Today's clothing try-on apps are an embarrassment, but whatever shop gets the app right first will see its online sales skyrocket.
With so many antitrust and patent infringement lawsuits going on, it's hard to know what outcomes to wish for and what to do with your mobility plans in the meantime.

News Features

This cover story examines how relations between China and the United States might have been significantly affected by a business decision made by Google. It also discusses what international companies can learn from Google's example.
Mystified engineers form early opinions about why the World Trade Center towers collapsed so quickly, despite being built to withstand the impact of a 707 and endure a three-hour fire.
Paradoxically, while virtualization's greatest security benefit is how it enables resource isolation (putting each egg in its own basket), its greatest security risk is how it enables resource consolidation (putting too many eggs in one basket).
In this cover story I extol the virtues of claims-based identity and access management technology, and relate the technology to Albus Dumbledore and the Dalai Lama.

General

Inaugural post on my sports blog, 3 from the 7. I shot and edited this video myself.
Part 9: This interview not only discussed how someone became a CIO but cautioned the reader about the drawbacks of the job.
Part 5: I visited the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center to conduct a video interview with the USTA CIO about his journey to the job.
Part 10: For the final installment of the series I designed an infographic that compiled the main take-aways and used the same visual style that had been used throughout the series.
Part 8: Interview with the NBA's CIO about how he got the job 14 years ago.
First of a two-part piece about whether Carmelo Anthony will leave the New York Knicks. This includes a video blog -- which I edited with Adobe Premiere -- and outside content curated with Storify.
Part 7: In this interview, Anne Agee tells how she made the jump from teaching English to running IT.
My husband and I gave the closing talk at the TEDMED 2013 conference, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
Part 6: CIO career coach Kim Batson gives her tips for what qualities and skills should be on the resume of anyone who wants the CIO job, and how to obtain those qualities and skills.
Part 3: I interview the man who was the CIO of the City of London while it was hosting the Olympics and learn how he specializes in holding interim positions.
Part 1: This blog and slideshow introduced a 10-part series about how to land the CIO job, and established the visual style I'd use for the entire series. Vintage B/W photos of children captured the timeless "what do I want to be when I grow up" question, with some charm and humor.
Part 2: I hosted an episode of live online radio, and interviewed Martha Heller, president of an executive search firm that specializes in CIO positions.
The Las Vegas government is partnering with a growing community of tech startups to help the city rebuild after a devastating recession left it peppered with abandoned construction projects.
NBA Math Hoops is a non-profit organization (partnered with the NBA) that uses basketball as a way to help kids love and learn math. They asked me to create an infographic that summarized the group's public positioning in an NBA city/community -- in this case, Cleveland.
This is a feature for the NBA's official stats site. It's a deep analysis of the Knicks' recent performance and what they must change if they want a chance to make the playoffs.
Part 4: I interviewed the CIO of Thomson Reuters, formerly the CIO of NYSE Euronext, about how he went from being a doctor of chemistry to running IT for the New York Stock Exchange.