About Liss
In person, I’m pretty quiet, but I grew up dumping my thoughts on the internet, so below you can find a few different passages where I probably overshare a little. If you don’t want all that, the short version about me is:
I grew up in Northeast Pennsylvania (aka NEPA) near the Delaware River, and after high school I followed it south to Philly to go to Moore College of Art & Design to study graphic design. After graduating, I worked as a web designer for 6 years before I decided I wanted to explore education, which I’m still doing and hoping to find a place in after finishing a year of service as a Joyful Readers tutor.
Read on if you want more!
-
I can remember three things being true about me as far back as I can remember: I loved stories—reading them, writing them, watching or listening to them—I loved making things—worksheets for my brother, little plastic lanyards, attempts at knitting, book covers for handwritten books—and I loved solving problems, sometimes even just random silly ones I made for myself, like tying random knots and undoing them like brainteasers.
These three loves eventually led me to design, which I discovered was a thing people could do for money through my high school computer arts class. Most of my projects revolved around books or writing: I made posters from quotes from my favorite books, or made covers for story ideas I had started exploring.
I went to college with the idea of being a book designer rattling around in the back of my head, but I realized when I started to look for internships in my junior year that all the publishing jobs were in New York, and I didn’t have New York’s cost-of-living money, or, to be honest, any desire to live or work in New York. I applied to lots of agencies in Philly instead, and ended up getting a spot at P’unk Avenue, a small web design studio in South Philly.
I had spent a lot of my time as a preteen on the internet building website for my Neopets, customizing forums, and poking around the HTML of my mom’s Myspace page (which she told me she made just so I could edit it for her.) But working at P’unk Avenue let me see that web design could do more than just look cool—you could tell meaningful stories to help your community, and they could also look cool. 😎
I loved my time at P’unk, but it came to an end in 2021, and I went on to work as a marketing site designer at WebstaurantStore. I loved my team, but I realized working in-house wasn’t for me, and I left to seek out other opportunities at the beginning of 2024. At the same time, I was teaching a web design course at my alma mater. The time I spent around students at the beginning of their design careers helped me realize that I needed to step away from design for a bit and reexamine my relationship to it.
The year and a half off that I’ve affectionately titled my “mini-retirement” gave me a lot of time to reflect on what I enjoy. And I realized in addition to those three things I mentioned earlier, I also love learning—both the process of doing it myself, and seeing other people do it. I love being in classroom environments, seeing others grow and growing along with them. I love the process of learning from others even as you’re teaching them.
I’m currently serving as a literacy tutor for the 2025-2026 school year and I’m very interested in seeing how I feel about teaching at the end of the year. I’m hoping my time in education is just beginning, and I’m excited to see how my past experiences can help shape my future career.
-
I have so many interests that I’ve had a really hard time making myself a website since leaving my design jobs! In the past, I could just put design work up and call it a portfolio, but now I feel like any website I have is incomplete if it doesn’t house all my different passions. Maybe that’s wrong! But it feels right to me.
As of 2025, my interests, in now particular order, include:
Quilting & patchwork sewing of all kinds
Printmaking
Writing
Literacy education
Crochet
Gaming and game design
-