Work
Brewmium LLC
Co-Founder · Project Management · QA · 2010 to present
Boutique software development company building custom mobile apps for variety of industries. I handle project management, quality assurance, and UX across our iOS, Android, and web work — and I’m the first set of eyes on most things before they ship.
For earlier work history, see linkedin.com/in/cindysamco.
Project Management
- Collaborative scheduling, with a focus on getting everyone owning their own tasks and deliverables.
- Thorough status reports for clients, team members, and upper management; written so people actually read them.
- Project triage: roadblocks, scheduling adjustments, client expectations, feature changes. The day-to-day stuff that keeps a project moving.
- Master gatekeeper (or is that key master?). I aim to be the “go-to” person for anything related to my project, so the rest of the team can focus on their work. If I can answer a question or solve a problem before it interrupts someone, I’m being successful.
- Turning high-level features, requirements, and mockups into specifications that engineers can actually estimate from.
- Identifying and managing outsourcing: localization, contract engineering, technical writing, production.
- Comfortable with the usual project tracking tools. Add a new one to my plate and I’ll be up to speed quickly.
Quality Assurance
- Black box testing Bugstress. I put myself in the role of your end user and find the issues that would otherwise stand in their way of a successful experience with your product.
- Comfortable pointing out where the product may be lacking in user experience, while keeping the design (and the designers) in mind.
- Q.E. — Quality Educator. I want to educate project stakeholders so they can make informed decisions about when a project is ready for the market or the client.
- Editing and proofreading on the side (the English Literature degree pays off). Let me find your typos, grammar gaffs, widows, and orphans.
A.I. Prompting
- Daily collaborator with ChatGPT and Claude, including Claude Code, on production work for Brewmium. Beyond chat-and-summarize: writing, reviewing, and shipping real code in partnership with my engineering co-founder.
- Comfortable across the major tools (Claude, ChatGPT, and whichever new one drops next week). Each has its strengths; picking the right one is half the job.
- Built and maintain Custom GPTs, including one for the City of Toledo for internal process coaching.
- Generate marketing imagery and adapt it for web, print, and social.
- A.I.-assisted analytics: turning data into questions, questions into prompts, prompts into something the team can actually act on.
- Strong instincts for when to trust the model and when to push back. That judgment turns out to be the most valuable part of the skill, which is a bit funny coming from a Q.A. lead.
Technology
- Proficient in Mac and Windows business and productivity tools: Microsoft suite, Adobe suite, Apple suite.
- Adobe Photoshop for adapting existing mockups; sliced for the web, resized for an app, prepped for print.
- Comfortable editing engineering assets directly: HTML, JSON, config files, simple PHP and JavaScript. With Claude Code in the mix, my reach extends further. I’ve been told I’d make a decent junior engineer if I had more formal coding training, though I prefer the PM and QA seat.
Volunteer
Most of my volunteer work happens at the intersection of “I have these skills” and “this small organization could really use them.”
- Website work for Toledo Neighbors Program (Food Pantry), Toledo Thursday Market (Farmers Market), and Donna’s Place. Three small Toledo institutions, each with their own scope and quirks.
- Toledo Neighbors Giving Garden mostly with my hands in the dirt rather than on a keyboard.
- City of Toledo: previous website work, Custom GPT development, and process coaching for staff.
Education
Bachelor of Science in English Literature (Oregon State / Portland State). A degree that surprises people often enough to be a reliable conversation starter. Yes, B.S., not B.A.