Meet the Blackbaud CRM Design Team

Brenda Murray is the design manager for the CRM Products Division. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree in writing and taught English composition for awhile, but realized that wasn't going to pay the rent and grocery bill. So she entered the software industry when jobs were falling out of the sky and did some technical writing, analyzed a little, designed a little, and tested a little. After many long, cold Chicago winters she migrated to Charleston where the weather is much more to her liking.

Brenda's responsibilities include making sure that the design team is cared for, loved, and fed. Along the way she provides learning expriences and guidance to the team with the goal of producing the best software experiences possible for Blackbaud's customers. She assists the team in getting to the heart of non-profit users' goals and business needs in order to produce high quality design deliverables used as the basis for collaboration with the folks who build, test, and write about Blackbaud products. If you can't find her drawing a flowchart on her whiteboard, she's probably in someone's office yakking about the value of thorough requirements gathering or evangelizing the design function. Sometimes she wakes up at night wondering how the team can best balance creating great software for non-profits with any competing timeframes and business and technical demands.  On the weekend you can find Brenda doing laundry, picking up the mess in her house that she created during the week, and complaining that the weather isn't warm enough.

 

Since joining Blackbaud in 2005, Katie Johnston has contributed to features in The Raiser's Edge 7, BBECRM, and is currently enjoying a great fundraising detour with Blackbaud Student Information Systems.  When asked what her favorite project has been to date, Katie replied, “No matter the feature, client contact is most important to me. I’m so grateful that clients will spend their time helping me get the right design going—and I’m always surprised how much fun we have in the process.”

When Katie’s not fishing for client feedback, she’s fishing for, well, fish. An accomplished angler, she currently holds the records for Charleston’s Smallest Flounder and Most Consecutive Hours Fishing with No Bites . We couldn’t be more proud (alhough we’ve suggested she brag more about the 250 lb marlin she caught in Cabo a few years ago). 

Solving the right problems at the right time for the right users in the right way keeps her up at night—as do the thoughts of hungry marlin everywhere! 

 

Shauna Kelley is a Business Systems Analyst on the Blackbaud Enterprise CRM Design team. Simply put, Shauna likes to design cool stuff. What keeps her up at night is designing cool stuff that can fit into the time, scope, and cost constraints of a project! Shauna’s work experience includes business analysis and consulting at various organizations in the banking, financial services, and insurance industries.

Originally from Boston, MA, Shauna patiently waited for the Red Sox to win a World Series before flying south to join Blackbaud in 2005. While she misses a good nor’easter and a nice bowl of “chowdah”, she’s perfectly content soaking in the Charleston sun and eating shrimp instead.”

 

John O’Connell is Business Systems Analyst for the CRM Design team, working on ResearchPoint. As a BSA he gets to research and design better ways for software to aid users in accomplishing their goals, which is exciting. Prior to Blackbaud a large amount of his experience was in a support role where you could only work with what was in front of you, now he gets to fix the problems and improve the user’s experience!

When not playing with his two kids, or relaxing on the porch with his wife - he tries to find as much time to golf as possible (hopefully one day he can play Augusta National). Being from the cold and snowy north (Central New York), he really loves Charleston, the warm weather and going to the beach.

 

Trit Mulligan is our Usability Engineer. She has been with Blackbaud since 1996, 10 of those years were spent in Customer Support. In her previous role, she was responsible for evangelizing users needs to make the products easier to use. Now, she works with users to improve the design early in the development cycle. She also implemented the Knowledgebase as a resource for users to find answers on their own.

When she's not talking to users, Trit enjoys crabbing and fishing in the Lil' Diddy with her husband and two girls. She also spends quite a bit of her time renovating her house.

Making sure the software meets user's need and is easy to use is Trit's top goal!

 

Pat Conley has worked in the software industry for 20 years and as a business analyst / software designer for 10 years. He joined Blackbaud in 2005 to be a part of the design team working on the Enterprise CRM solution. A graduate of Georgia Tech majoring in Computer Science and minoring in Human Factors, Pat has deep knowledge and a keen interest in the adaptation of software to meet the users needs, rather than the other way around. His most successful projects have always included close collaboration with customers; all the textbooks in the world will only get you so far.

When not designing software, Pat enjoys playing tennis, hiking, and volunteering with the Sierra Club.

 

Rich Conte is Senior Business Systems Architect who is responsible for dreaming up solutions to client needs that give our programmers severe cases of heartburn! He has been instrumental in the Infinity/Galileo project. When he's not identifying a solution to a customer need he is best seen in a wet suit when it's cold and board shorts when it's warm.

Nothing keeps him up at night, he says that his his best problem-solving occurs when he's asleep! That's why he keeps a notebook by his bed.