Nissa Eames

About me in 10 bullet points

• Grew up in Williamsburg, both parents taught at William & Mary: Dad, Computer Science and Mom, German.
• My first computer program was creating a unipeg drawing (that’s a unicorn-pegasus, of course) using Basic code when I was eight.
• Went to college thinking I’d study psychology to be a counselor, then changed to an Art major, which was awesome. During my last semester I took a computer graphics class and that nailed it: I could satisfy both my artsy side and my technical side at the same time. Bonus: undo.
• First graphics job was at a marketing agency in Savannah, Georgia. I started off creating print advertisements and eventually taught myself the *new* art of HTML and Javascript (CSS wasn’t even around yet). Ah, tables.
• Worked for a while at the Savannah Morning News’ online department creating specialty sites then eventually headed back to Williamsburg where I got a job in Colonial Williamsburg’s fledgling internet department as Web Designer.
• Worked at Colonial Williamsburg for 15 years, along the way becoming Senior Web Designer and Developer, earning awards for the design and code of several websites, and learning many, many things including CSS, XML, XSLT, PHP, MySQL, ColdFusion, and WordPress and Drupal CMS development. At one point we got to design print articles for Colonial Williamsburg’s magazine, the Journal, which was fun.
• Favorite projects there were designing and building the online exhibits: Mapping Colonial America and Historic Threads.
• I now work here at William & Mary as Web Developer in the University Web & Design department, helping to improve and develop William & Mary’s websites and applications. 
• In my personal life, I am married to Chris Eames, rock-star math teacher at Jamestown High School, and I have two young boys, Dylan and Luke, who light up my life.
• In my (tiny speck of) free time I like to grow flowers and oil paint.