Hi! I'm Brad Elders (he/him/his).

Where I'm From

I grew up in rural Arizona, in a small town full of cotton fields and big stretches of desert hills and mesas. Ever since I was a kid, I was fascinated with creative and technical projects, like mapping out the trails and canal in my neighborhood, creating lost posters for my stuffed Mickey Mouse, and re-recording all the sound alerts on our family computer (my dad thought that one was funny, but honestly it made using the computer more annoying than ever).

Image: Me at the Grand Canyon, 2020.

Education

I moved to Utah after finishing high school to attend university. I had gained a deep appreciation for language after studying both French and Spanish. (While I’m fluent in Spanish, French was more of a passion project for me.) My love of language easily translated into pursuing and graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in linguistics. While in school, I gravitated toward what I saw as the more human elements of language—sociolinguistics, semantics, pragmatics, scripts, phonetics—the things that inspire us to speak the idiosyncratic ways we all do.

I will soon finish the Masters of Arts program with the Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences department of Utah State University, with an expected graduation of December 2023.

Image: Me with my parents at my graduation, 2016.

Work History

I took my first steps into the professional world after working creative positions during my time in school. After graduation I looked for work as a copyeditor and soon enough found myself working for AboveTraining, Inc., a food safety instruction company. I discovered something interesting while I was working on allergen awareness documents and editing food safety narration scripts: instructional design is a challenge, but an exciting one! From then on, I’ve worked to improve my skills, and increase my knowledge in the field, changing companies a few times and even returning to school for a Master’s degree.

Image: Me at the DevLearn conference, 2018.