coming out of the closet

So, I made the big decision to come clean and stop posting anonymously. Jeff Jarvis once gave me a hard time about it, which -- if you're going to have someone give you a hard time, is relatively cool. Anyway, it seems pretty stupid at this point. Anyone who knows me knows that I have little to no capacity for self censorship, so it's more likely that an off the cuff remark is going to be the thing that bites me in the butt and not a post that I make to my blog.

My name is Alison Byrne Fields. I'm in my mid-30's and traumatized enough by this fact not to actually be able to utter the actual number. I live in Washington DC. I'm single. Never married. No kids. I'm (and I know this will shock you) a registered Democrat and always have been. (The first vote that I cast was for David Dinkins as mayor of New York.) I work for a big PR firm. Before that I worked for myself as a strategic communications consultant to foundations, nonprofits and political campaigns. In the middle there I got a Master of Public Policy degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Before that I was the Creative Director and Chief Strategist for Rock the Vote and before that I worked for a small nonprofit in North Carolina that worked with young people to produce their own media. Before that I wore diapers and drooled.

I don't think that my "big" reveal is going to impact a whole hell of a lot about the content of this blog beyond the fact that I think I'll be spending more time talking about things that I am thinking about professionally. This does NOT mean I am going to write about work. It does mean that I will be writing about the things that I am reading and thinking about that influence my work.

Okay, it's not really that big of a decision. It's actually pretty dumb that it has taken me this long.

See you on the other side.