April 17, 2002
Re: Heather Moore
To Whom It May Concern:
I am pleased to provide this letter of recommendation for Heather Moore, who served as Manager of Web Production at Fatbrain, a Barnes and Noble.com company, between 1999 and 2002. As Senior Director of Content and Merchandising at Fatbrain, I directly supervised Heather's work and feel qualified to appraise the many fine qualities and contributions she brought to her immediate group and the company overall.
As Manager of Web Production, Heather supervised a team of five web producers who were responsible for creating and maintaining all web pages comprising Fatbrain's consumer and B2B internet presence. Her elevation to Manager came after numerous other promotions, from web producer to senior web producer and to user interface producer. Fatbrain's annual revenue rate was approximately $60 million during Heather's tenure, thus her position as Manager of Web Production was a key role in the company. Specifically, she was a pivotal liaison with numerous business and technical groups in the company, including product marketing, editorial, sales, strategic partnerships, and engineering.
Heather's reputation within the company was, simply put, sterling. As a web producer, everyone regarded her as the most talented member of the production team, offering the most creative and efficient solutions. She was also known as the person who could get the job done quickly, accurately, and with exemplary diplomacy (and with a sense of humor). Universally, people within the company felt that Heather was the person to go to for the highest quality of work. For these reasons she ultimately was promoted to Manager.
After Fatbrain was acquired by Barnes and Noble.com, Heather accepted additional responsibilities in the business and technical transition project, which lasted more than six months. She became a lead contact in our transition coordination with BN.com in New York. I cannot over-emphasize the complexity and enormous scope of this project, which included re-designing and re-building all Fatbrain pages in a new look-and-feel, with additional technical and design requirements. Heather participated in all strategic planning meetings for the web transition, and worked directly with her counterparts at BN in New York to ensure that the project proceeded according to plan. She was tasked to allocate web production resources accordingly and to make important decisions about the design and implementation of the new business-to-business pages at BN.com. Employing her technical skills, management ability, and deftness in making complicated judgment calls, she proved herself again by accomplishing all transition projects before the deadline, and all the while she exhibited professionalism, intelligence, grace under fire, and an impressive work ethic.
If Heather could relocate to New York City, I would absolutely bring her with me to continue working at BN.com. However, I am convinced that she will be recruited quickly into another challenging position by a company who needs a person with Heather's range of talents, which go beyond the realm of managing a web production team. She is an excellent communicator with keen writing skills; she has developed a strong foundation in UI principles; and repeatedly she has proven herself as a facilitator of multiple projects and divergent groups.
I would be happy to provide further input and welcome phone or email inquiries.
Sincerely,
David Rompf
Director, Professional, Technical & Business Books
Barnes & Noble.com
