Matthew Kaufold

McCarthy Cook: “I am pleased to offer this letter of recommendation for Jennifer Howell, who provided website design, development and hosting as well general IT services for McCarthy Cook & Co. (“MCC”) from 2000 through 2012. It is important to note that MCC did not have a corporate website prior to Jennifer’s involvement with the firm. There were ideas and concepts that were developed over several years by internal employees with varying levels of training and expertise, but the elements were rather unorganized and chaotic and lacked any semblance of structure. Jennifer tackled what would have been an overwhelming project by corralling the various ideas and formulating an organized approach to the design of our website. The MCC website now has numerous well-designed, functional and informative pages largely due to Jennifer’s efforts, which included: Designing and redesigning the site to keep current, professional look. She accomplished this by designing and implementing a new masthead and toolbar, standardizing the HTML code, standardizing the text layout, and designed and implementing a new system of drop-down menus. Reorganizing the site structure, identifying and removing outdated material and files, and providing logic to the overall flow of the site. Providing on-going site maintenance, updating page content and design and developing new content as needed. She also identified and resolved numerous errors and found ways to minimize load time. Although Jennifer was not an employee of McCarthy Cook, she was a highly valued member of the team who brought many desirable attributes to the workplace. Her pleasant, friendly demeanor was always appreciated and she was always willing to share her knowledge with our staff, whether in one-on-one instruction or by creating and presenting detailed training materials. Another key success measure was Jennifer’s ability to communicate well with members of our team who were not as well-versed in IT and website design as others. She grasped the concepts and ideas brought by others, often in layman’s terms, and responded quickly with feasible implementation strategies. Additionally, she continuously took the initiative to find solutions. If she, or someone else, had an idea for a site-enhancing function, she did whatever necessary to learn how to implement it. I believe you will find Jennifer to be a strong contributor to your organization. I invite you to visit our website at www.mccarthycook.com to preview Jennifer’s work – I am confident that you will be impressed.“