I haven’t always been a digital designer, but I’ve always been
a communicator.

Overcoming a childhood stutter has been one of my most profound accomplishments, and one that has taught me over the years about deliberate, strategic communication. That is, making words count, and understanding how your audience hears you. Stage acting became a platform to exercise this muscle, and I performed for years in high school and later in college.

A lifelong passion for aviation, infrastructure and hoping to make the world a better place pulled me towards an interdisciplinary education at Oberlin College, where I majored in Politics with a focus on political psychology, earning High Honors for my research paper in the field. My work revolved around understanding how people make decisions, and how the widespread consumption of digital media unconsciously guides behavior.

After graduating in the spring of 2016, I merged my broad passion for transportation, problem solving and digital media with a knack for community building, connection and unconscious decision-making as a Community Manager—and now Digital Content Strategist at TPG. My strength in design and user experience became increasingly evident as I designed communities, grew audiences and strategized content, even harkening back to websites I designed as early as middle school. UX and influential communication was something I was doing everyday, and I wanted to make it my day job.

By May, 2019, I had completed a User Experience Design course at General Assembly’s campus in New York City, and had already designed a money-making widget design for TPG’s site teams. I continue to refine my craft, integrating interdisciplinary studies — from urban design and sociology to political psychology, communication and marketing strategy — to create wholistic solutions for audiences across working functional groups.

I continue to learn on the job, and in my free time, where I also love biking, photo-taking, plane-spotting, flight simming and getting (a tad) lost.

There’s a lot to do. Let’s get to work.

- WMC

Wallace Maxwell Cotton

I’m an audience, content and user experience design specialist based in New York City. I have 5+ years of professional experience in brand management, marketing, audience development, design, content and strategic communications, and am looking to make UX design my day job.

Email me at wcshack@gmail.com or you can contact me on social.

Try LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter.

You can find my full resume here.

Key Skills

• Audience development, UX design, brand management, strategic communications, content creation including copywriting.

• Sketch, InVision, Google Suite, Instagram, Facebook Groups, Twitter, Logic Pro X.

Education

• General Assembly, User Experience Design, 2018 - 2019.

• Oberlin College, Bachelor of Arts, Major in Politics with High Honors. Class of 2016

(Courtesy Giphy)

Undergraduate Thesis (awarded High Honors)

• Mass Media and its Terrorizing Qualities: The Counter-Productive Implications Of Network T.V. News On Politics And Society (April, 2016)

More recently: Travel, aviation and news

• Flying the World’s Most Elusive 747:
  The Houston Express to Angola

• Business as usual: A review of Cathay Pacific’s A350-900 in business class, Hong Kong to Newark

• Out of Africa: Ethiopian Airlines (A350-900) Business From Addis Ababa to London

• America's Longest Red-Eye: Hawaiian Airlines’ A330 in Economy From Honolulu to Boston

You can find more stories like these
on my author page.

Want more?

Write me.