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dae courtney.
· overview

I make complicated things playable.

Playable means you can pick it up and use it without a manual: a knowledge base, a prompt library, a job post, a platformer video game. Content systems, AI content operations, knowledge architecture, marketing and employer brand, with years of production work underneath. Click a filter and this page refocuses on the lane you're hiring for.

Dae Courtney Dae Courtney
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the practice behind all of this certainty craft.
the practice behind all of this
certainty craft.

Research a world until you can hear its true language, then build the smallest structure that keeps that language true after you leave.

The structure has a name: Core Content, the governed layer where approved claims live with their source, owner, reuse rules and expiry. Every surface inherits the truth from there instead of improvising a version of it. Deliberately the smallest thing that holds: governance that outgrows the problem stops being used, and an unused system drifts.

Bespoke each time, because nobody's content problem is shaped like anyone else's. A staffing agency's true sentence is not a bank's. Research first; the structure is only what it takes to carry the answer.

Everything here is that practice at different altitudes. A taxonomy, a job post, a help centre, a podcast episode, a score for a dance piece, each is a world researched until its true language shows up, then given a structure it can survive in. Four moves, every time.

01 · listen
Go into the domain far enough to hear how people actually talk. Surveys with schedulers. Thirty interviews on a microphone. A rehearsal room.
02 · find the true sentence
The claim that is accurate, sayable and worth repeating. “Onboarding takes two to six weeks, set by credential verification”, not the version that tested better.
03 · build somewhere for it to live
Source, owner, expiry, review gate. Cascade, controlled vocabulary, access tier. Only as much machinery as the claim needs to stay true.
04 · hand it over
It has to run without me. A non-technical team using it daily is the only proof that counts, and why the work survived the company being acquired.
· in depth

How the system actually holds

The layer stack is the shape of it. These are the rules that make the shape reliable enough for a non-technical team to run it without me in the room.

01
Resolution is deterministic
A manifest names brand, surface, audience and brief. The compiler walks the stack and emits one fully resolved prompt. It makes no model calls: same manifest, same prompt, every time.
02
Voice is a diff, compliance is a ratchet
Each brand declares only how it departs from the baseline. Compliance and controlled terminology are floors that may only tighten as you move down the cascade. Strictest wins.
03
Voice can be bypassed, traceably
Sometimes the right answer is to break the house style. The system allows it explicitly and records that a person chose it, rather than pretending it never happens.
04
Four gates before a reader
Preflight for unresolved authoring markers and open decisions, a 24-category legal risk scan, a findability scan, then stakeholder sign-off. Review sits inside the cycle, not bolted on after it.
05
Agents propose, operators promote
Nothing publishes itself. Every status change is a person deciding, on purpose, with the labels in front of them.
06
Built to survive its owner
Designed brand-independent from the start. The company was acquired in 2026; the architecture has since been generalized and still works.
· in depth

AI operations with the governance attached

Everyone can generate. The harder work is making generation accountable enough to use in a regulated industry, where being confidently wrong has consequences.

01
A prompt library versioned like code
87 governed production prompts with YAML metadata, a flat prefixed tag namespace, and a Python regeneration pipeline. You can diff it, review it, and roll it back.
02
Eighteen automated editorial checks
Ten adapted, eight written from scratch for this industry's real failure modes: Quebec Localization, Nurse Sensitivity, De-Patronize, Confidence-Legal.
03
Provenance tiers on every fact
Each claim carries a tier checked against a registry of who may vouch for what. An agent can propose research; an agent can never be recorded as a human source.
04
Grounding assets for retrieval
Per page: claims with sources, FAQ pairs, disambiguation blocks, and glossaries with synonyms, written for the assistant answering on your behalf as much as for the reader.
05
Measurement, honestly labelled
Answerability, citation rate and hallucination thresholds were designed and specified. The company was acquired mid-rollout, so these are the measurement system, not achieved results.
06
Policy drafted across three functions
Drafted the company AI Image Policy across Design, Marketing and engineering. The slow half of AI work is consent between functions.
· in depth

Knowledge someone can reach into

A knowledge base is a promise about who gets to know what. In most organizations that promise gets made by accident, one permission setting at a time. This one was written down.

01
Five tiers, on purpose
Role-based collections crossed with T1 public through T5 leadership-only, scaled across a multi-agency organization. Excluding someone became explicit governance rather than an artifact of setup.
02
A 270+ term controlled vocabulary
Bilingual EN/FR, governed against the platform data model so the words in the product, the help centre and the schedule finally agree.
03
Grounded in primary research
A bilingual scheduler survey asked the people doing the work to rate data categories by how useful they were for an actual decision. The taxonomy follows their answers, not mine.
04
Work governance, not just content
An Asana portfolio, project and task model with required fields and quarterly housekeeping. That is the part that keeps a system alive after the launch enthusiasm fades.
05
Information architecture came first
Alejandro led the IA and got the rare thing almost no product team gets: structure defined before anyone drew a screen. I followed his lead and kept building into it.
· in depth

Writing where the words are the interface

In a regulated product, microcopy is not decoration. It is the last place a promise gets made before someone acts on it.

01
A toggle is a consent threshold
Profile visibility in a healthcare product is not a settings control. I flagged pre-toggle access as a consent violation and wrote the UI to say what it actually does.
02
Honest about the wait
The credential check takes two to six weeks. The interface says two to six weeks, instead of implying instant approval and spending the trust later.
03
Structure over drop zones
A credential hub written as a structured form rather than a place to throw files. Resumable two-sided onboarding, so leaving mid-flow is not a failure state.
04
Release notes and executive voice
Release notes inside the product; leadership communications co-written with the CTO and credited publicly.
05
One source, two formats
eSoluguide, a nursing clinical reference, shipped as both EPUB and PWA from a single source, with the commit history to prove it.
· in depth

Marketing that survives contact with the truth

Employer brand is the discipline where overclaiming is punished fastest: the new hire finds out in week two. That constraint made me better at all the rest of it.

01
An EVP from kickoff to launch
Pivotal contributor at Shopify, working with C-suite stakeholders, plus the Top Employer designation application.
02
Three continents, one promise
Paid campaign copy across EMEA, APAC and the Americas, including a localized Singapore campaign built from audience research rather than translated from headquarters.
03
76% follower growth
On the employer brand channel, alongside the EVP launch. Intern to manager in about five months.
04
The plumbing nobody claims
Diagnosed JS-rendered ATS portals invisible to Google for Jobs and Indeed, then built an audit agent for it. Your best job post is worth nothing if nobody can find it.
05
Analytics found dark, then fixed
Four of five properties were not reporting. I wrote the master remediation plan: maturity model, federated reporting, content-to-hire attribution, Law 25 and PIPEDA framing.
06
One bounded test beat the debate
Instead of arguing about agency value, the team paused a single agency’s ad spend for a month. Nothing moved. Broad spend came in-house; targeted spend was kept for hard-to-fill specialized roles.
· in depth

Producing, end to end

Production is where I learned that a system is only good if the person inside it can forget it exists.

01
The whole producer scope
Preproduction, vocal coaching, intro and outro craft, music procurement, in-studio and on-site recording, training others to record at home, script review, season strategy.
02
And the post, and the release
Denoise, mix, transitions, stingers. Then go-to-market, captions, podcast ads and partnership audits.
03
Thirty guests worth keeping
30+ tech leaders including Lightspeed CEO Dax Dasilva. Canada Media Fund, Google Chrome and RBC sponsored the show; it reached 18% of an 8,000-person network.
04
A conference directed on the floor
Content and branding strategy for the QT Qonference, a six-person media crew directed on site, and 4× ROI on the event’s marketing spend.
05
Findable afterwards
A Hivebrite media resource centre, so everything we made could be found by the people it was made for.
06
Ten years of technical direction
AV in performance venues, which is mostly the craft of knowing, in advance, what is going to go wrong.
· in depth

The work I would do anyway

Twelve years of it. Dancers, actors, circus performers, dark rooms, one shot a night.

01
Composition and sound design, 2013–2025
For dance, theatre, circus and installation: MAI, Danse-Cité, La Chapelle, Agora de la danse, The Kitchen and Judson Church in New York, the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, the SAT.
02
Build it so they can forget it
The instrument is not the point. Someone has to be able to play it, in the room, on the night, without thinking about it. That is the entire job.
03
Teaching the tools
Fonofone workshops with Yves Daoust; work with the SenseLab. Mostly it is putting an instrument in someone’s hands and then getting out of the way.
04
Installation work
Assistant on Drumming by Steve Reich under Maxime Rioux; Ghost Hole IV and V in Toronto.
05
Still doing it
The most recent piece opened in 2025. Not a former life, and not a hobby that explains the day job. A parallel practice with its own collaborators and its own standards.
· featured work

Three that carry the argument

drift detector · illustrative

Two pages. One organization. Both saying different things.

An ungoverned content estate from the inside: a made-up staffing company, real failure modes. Press the button to compile both pages through a voice cascade and a claim registry.

/careers · owner brand

We onboard new nurses in as little as 48 hours.Onboarding takes two to six weeks, set by credential verification. Our talent partnersclinical schedulers work with you directly.

/help · operating brand

Credential review generally takes four to six weeks.Onboarding takes two to six weeks, set by credential verification. Your care coordinatorclinical scheduler will be in touch.

2 contradictions · 1 unsourced claim · 1 uncontrolled term. Nobody wrote these to disagree. The structure let them.

One claim record, one source, one owner, one expiry, inherited by both surfaces. The term resolves to the controlled vocabulary. That is Core Content, and the whole job.

Website Help centre Product UI Job post Onboarding
one claim record
Onboarding takes two to six weeks
owner: credentialing lead
source: provincial verification SLA
review: quarterly
reuse: adapt per surface
Premier Health of America · 2024–2026
flagship

A content compiler, not a content generator

The first on-brand piece took over four weeks, almost none of it writing. So voice, compliance, terminology and audience were defined once as versioned layers and compiled deterministically into one prompt per task. Voice is a diff; compliance is a ratchet that only tightens. Agents propose, operators promote, nothing publishes itself. Brief to published became five days.

Shipped and in daily use by a non-technical team. The company was acquired in 2026; the architecture was built portable and has since been generalized. Adoption was uneven across functions, which is the honest part: people had their own work to hold together. So the system's guarantees do not depend on how fast anyone picks up the tooling.

core
Org-wide baseline voice plus non-negotiable values. Inherited by everything, changed rarely.
brand
Owner brand → operating brands → sub-brands. Each declares only how it departs.
surface
Format rules: blog post, press release, product microcopy, release note.
aspects
Compliance, controlled terminology and audience, attached by the task rather than remembered by a person.
what ships with every piece
One content piece
article, help centre page, product page
claims → sourcesFAQ pairsdisambiguationglossary + synonymsEN / FR paritystructured markup
legible to a person
Skimmable, sourced, and it says the same thing as the last page they read.
legible to a machine
Retrievable and quotable, so an answer engine cites you instead of guessing.
A scored rubric decides whether a piece is done. Same checklist every time, so the standard does not depend on who wrote it.
premier health of america · findability

Search, AI answers and site search are one problem

Someone with a question at eleven at night asks Google, or an assistant, or the help centre. Same person, same worry. I wrote the findability spec unifying technical SEO, E-E-A-T, grounding assets, bilingual parity gates and ISO 9001 document control, then ran a hackathon that produced a repeatable workflow scoped to two gold-standard posts a month, no added headcount.

Answerability KPIs designed and specified. The company was acquired mid-rollout, so these are presented as the measurement system, not achieved results.

Read the full case study →
shopify · CHCA · employer brand

An employer promise, kickoff to launch

A job post is someone deciding whether to move their life, so accuracy beats enthusiasm. At Shopify: pivotal contributor to the EVP with C-suite stakeholders, campaign copy across EMEA, APAC and the Americas including a researched Singapore localization, 76% follower growth, the Top Employer application. At CHCA: five nurse retention personas. Also diagnosed JS-rendered ATS portals invisible to Google for Jobs, then built an audit agent.

Read the full case study →
Shopify employer value proposition campaign ad
Campaign copy, Shopify EVP launch
· more work

The rest of the work

Five tiers of access, governed on purpose
premier health of america · guru
Full case study →
Role-based collections crossed with T1–T5 sensitivity tiers, so excluding someone is a decision rather than an accident of setup. Alongside it, a 270+ term bilingual vocabulary grounded in scheduler research, and an Asana governance model with required fields.
Rewriting every word on the websites
premier health of america · website copy
I rewrote the copy across the company's websites, the group site and its operating brands together. The same claims had been saying different things for years. Rewriting them made the drift visible; the voice cascade and claim records were built to keep it from coming back.
Information architecture before the first mockup
liphe · information architecture
Full case study →
Alejandro led the IA and defined structure before anyone drew a screen, the rare discipline almost no product team gets. I followed his lead and built into it: data-model and workflow layers, the design system in one place, content structures on top.
Cutting the agencies, bringing marketing in-house
premier health of america · marketing operations
Rather than debate whether the agency relationships still earned their fee, the team ran one reversible test: pause a single agency's ad spend for a month. Nothing moved. Broad spend came in-house; targeted spend stayed for hard-to-fill specialized roles. Figures withheld pending confirmation.
Microcopy that tells the regulatory truth
liphe · product content
Full case study →
A profile-visibility toggle in a healthcare product is a consent threshold, not a settings control. The interface now admits a credential check takes two to six weeks instead of implying instant approval. Plus release notes, a credential hub as structured form, resumable onboarding, and eSoluguide shipped as EPUB and PWA from one source.
A conference, directed on the floor
qt qonference · event content production
Full case study →
Content and branding strategy, a six-person media crew directed on site, video delivered from the event, 4× ROI on its marketing spend. Ten years of AV technical direction underneath it, mostly the craft of knowing in advance what will go wrong.
Running the room, not just the channel
queertech · community operations
Full case study →
Social engagement up 50% as Digital Marketing Manager. A network of 8,000+ tech professionals to serve rather than broadcast at, a Hivebrite resource centre so members could find what we made, and Shopify Alumni community management before that.
Learning infrastructure for 25+ organizations
caitlin lee consulting · cosimu
Full case study →
Curriculum design, client networks, learning libraries, video courses and skill-tracking tools for social justice and direct service organizations. Earlier: a province-wide communications network in Quebec's English education system, and edtech coaching in Quebec and Hong Kong.
A brand video and a game about being a nurse
ai-supported media · watch and play below
Produced, prompted, edited and wrote a healthcare group's brand video: ninety seconds, live on their homepage. Built Timesheet Rush, a nurse-empathy platformer, with Claude as producer and prompter. Drafted the company AI Image Policy across Design, Marketing and engineering.
Conversations built to be finished
qt podcast · listen below
Full case study →
Hosted and produced end to end: 30+ tech leaders including Lightspeed CEO Dax Dasilva, sponsors including Canada Media Fund, Google Chrome and RBC, reaching 18% of an 8,000-person network. Before that, ten years of sound for dance, theatre and film, and askîwan with Tyson Houseman.
· watch & play

Watch one, play one

This is the part of AI I actually find exciting, and it isn't faster copy. Interactive media used to need a team, a quarter and a budget, so a content person with a point to make wrote a memo instead. Now the argument can be a thing you play.

watch
The brand video

Produced, prompted, edited and written by me. Ninety seconds, live on the client's homepage.

playable
Timesheet Rush

Getting a timesheet approved is, for an agency nurse, genuinely one of the hardest parts of the week. Wrong week selected. Missing signature. A coordinator who left at four. It's a small indignity repeated hundreds of times, and it doesn't survive being put on a slide. So it's a joke you have to play instead. The timesheet is the boss level.

Built with Claude as producer and prompter. On a computer, click the panel so it takes the keyboard, then use the arrow keys and space. On a phone, tap Play and use the on-screen buttons.

The Timesheet Rush play field: a nurse below seven weekday columns, ready to catch falling shift blocks
Timesheet Rush
· the podcast
The QT Podcast

The people who said yes

I hosted and produced the QT Podcast end to end. Booking a CEO is one skill; getting them to say something worth keeping is a different one. These are their words from the season I ran, quoted from the published episodes and linked back to them. They were generous with them.

Dax Dasilva

“There's a magic to our community. There are ways that we can inspire and influence the journey that your company is going to have that's unique. So don't be shy, be proud.”

Dax Dasilva
CEO and founder, Lightspeed Commerce
David Cardon

“Your network is a very powerful part of the way that your career progresses. These kinds of conferences are amazing spaces for people to connect with each other, share ideas, and develop together as professionals.”

David Cardon
Regional Lead, Morgan Stanley Montreal
Florencia Herra Vega

“There's a joy in finding people who understand the same things as you. There's joy to be found in difference, in not being in your comfort zone and sharing something new with people.”

Florencia Herra Vega
CTO, AlleyCorp Nord
Sam Naylor

“My career shifted from something that felt like I was hiding, into something where I'm trying really hard to push the boundaries of what a professional looks like, talks like, and exists like.”

Sam Naylor
Chief of staff, Deloitte
Jess Malz

“Some of the most influential leaders I've ever seen lead with humility, lead by asking questions, lead by listening. Questions encourage self-reflection, they empower others to take ownership.”

Jess Malz
Founder, INDO
On set during a QT Podcast recording

“With so many different people and with so many different stories, we hope to contribute towards building a story format that honours our community's diversity.”

Dae Courtney
Host and producer
Madness: the Podcast cover art Apple Podcasts rating: 4.8 out of 5, 308 ratings Also co-producer of Madness: the Podcast, featured on Michael Moore's Rumble.
· on stage

Sound for bodies in space

Twelve years composing and performing sound for dance, theatre and installation, from artist-run lofts to The Kitchen. Live work mostly: one room, one night, no undo. It has its own history, its own collaborators and its own standards, and it is still running.

Performance documentation from [guāng yīn] at MAI, 2025: a performer in a pink fur hat seen through the glass of a claw machine packed with boxed prizes.
MAI + Danse-Cité · 2025
most recent

[guāng yīn], the lightest dark is darker than the darkest light

Nien Tzu Weng's immersive solo, three years in the making, weaves performance with video mapping, augmented reality and laser work, in a dream landscape drawn from her Taiwanese roots. I built the sound. Alongside me in the credits: video mapping and mixed-reality artists, a rope specialist, and a Laser Girl.

Show page at MAI
Performance documentation from askîwan: a darkened stage lit in blue, a projected mountain landscape behind a camera on a tripod, with bowls of water and scattered material on the floor.
with Tyson Houseman · OFFTA, La Chapelle, PuSh · touring

askîwan ᐊᐢᑮᐊᐧᐣ

An operatic multimedia performance created and directed by Cree artist Tyson Houseman, built from live video feeds, object performance at miniature scale, and mountainscapes standing in for deep, non-linear geologic time. I composed the electroacoustic score and perform it live, under baritone lyrics sung in nêhiyawêwin, with viola da gamba. It has toured across several seasons and venues. Show page

selected earlier work
SHE'S LATE // A CIRCUS SHOW
Experimental circus of impossible tasks with Nien Tzu Weng and Camille Lacelle-Wilsley · Double Fantasy · La Chapelle · 2023 · Show page
RAAKSHAS: A BAD TIME FOR GODS · OUT OF BARK AND BONE
Sound conceptions with Roger Sinha · Agora de la danse · 2020
Drumming, by Steve Reich
Installation assistant under Maxime Rioux · 2017
Vinyl Retro
With Karen Bernard and Barbara Mahler · The Kitchen, New York · 2016
League of Lady Wrestlers: Castlemania
Société des Arts Technologiques · showcased by Vice · 2015
Reuse, Recycle
With Karen Bernard · Judson Church, New York · 2015
MORE THAN HERE: Midnight to 4AM
With Mi-Jeong Lee · Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal · 2014

Full performance CV on request · 2013–2025

· the numbers

The numbers, with caveats attached

Every one traceable to documented evidence

Hover or focus any figure for its source

See the twelve numbers
5 days
brief-to-publish, down from over four weeks
Premier Health of America, 2024–2026 · compiler case study · claim record with documented evidence
87
governed production prompts, versioned
Prompt library: YAML metadata, flat prefixed tags, Python regeneration pipeline · counted at handover
18
automated editorial checks, 8 written from scratch
Rules engine · originals include Quebec Localization, Nurse Sensitivity, De-Patronize, Confidence-Legal
24
legal risk categories screened pre-publication
Pre-publication legal risk scanner, regulated healthcare · category list on request
270+
term bilingual taxonomy, grounded in scheduler research
Controlled vocabulary EN/FR, governed against the platform data model · bilingual scheduler survey
5 tiers
of knowledge access, T1 public to T5 leadership
Guru access tier policy · role-based collections × T1–T5 · shipped, multi-agency org
76%
employer brand LinkedIn growth at Shopify
Employer brand channel, Shopify tenure 2021–2022 · follower growth, channel analytics
6
person media crew directed on the conference floor
QT Qonference · video captured and delivered from the event · the crew behind the 4× ROI on marketing spend
30+
tech leaders produced on the QT Podcast
QT Podcast, produced end to end · includes Lightspeed CEO Dax Dasilva · episode listed below
8,000+
professional network served at QueerTech
QueerTech 2SLGBTQ+ tech community · 18% target-audience podcast reach, 50% engagement growth
1 source
nursing reference shipped as EPUB and PWA
eSoluguide · single-source publishing to two formats · commit history
4 of 5
analytics properties found dark, then a remediation plan
Analytics audit, 5 properties · master remediation plan: maturity model, federated reporting, Law 25 / PIPEDA
· where i’ve worked

Where I’ve worked

See the full history
Sr. Copywriter (Content Systems)Oct 2024 – now
Premier Health of America · Montreal
Knowledge-base access architecture, the bilingual vocabulary, the prompt library and rules engine, the findability spec, the analytics remediation plan, product microcopy, the AI image policy, executive communications with the CTO. Documented scope beyond the title.
Digital Marketing Manager & Content Producer2023 – 2024
QueerTech · Montreal
The QT Podcast end to end, the Qonference media crew and its 4× ROI on marketing spend, 50% engagement growth, an 8,000+ network served rather than broadcast at.
Client Network & Learning Lead2022 – 2023
Caitlin Lee Consulting · 25+ organizations served
Employer Brand Marketing Manager2021 – 2022
Shopify · remote, Canada · intern to manager in ~5 months
Pivotal contributor to the EVP from kickoff to launch with C-suite stakeholders; campaigns across EMEA, APAC and the Americas; 76% LinkedIn growth; the Top Employer application.
Freelance Producer & Marketer2014 – 2024
Brand and social for The Weather Holds, an artist who is themself a Juno-award-winning producer. Audio at the Musée des beaux-arts, Judson Church and The Kitchen in New York. Co-producer of Madness: the Podcast.
Communications Specialist2019
COSIMU · Quebec's English education system; edtech coaching in Quebec and Hong Kong

“crafted with the help of the amazing Dae Courtney”

public credit on a CTO's leadership posts, co-written
The rest of it
Four years running a four-person construction crew: tiling, framing, drywall, hiring and training included. A Mastercard × BrainStation hackathon win, with seven teams and twenty-four hours, and an accessible-security concept presented to Mastercard's Global Head of R&D. Youth work at YMCA Coyote Camp and C-Vert. Formal training in electroacoustics and computer music, which is where the systems instinct came from.
We won! ribbon from the hackathon deck Mastercard x BrainStation hackathon lockup
Practice
Content systems and governance · information architecture and taxonomy · knowledge management (Guru) · AI content operations and prompt engineering · UX writing and product content · findability, SEO and AI retrieval readiness · employer brand and recruitment marketing · analytics architecture · privacy compliance framing (Law 25, PIPEDA) · bilingual content systems (EN primary, FR parity governance)
Tools
Guru, SharePoint, Asana, Notion · Claude and structured prompt systems · GA4, Looker, Tableau, Funnel.io · Google / Meta / LinkedIn Ads · Semrush, Screaming Frog · Figma, Adobe Suite, Canva · Git, Framer, Kotobee
Credentials
BA Communications, Concordia (2017) · Ph.Creative Certified Employer Brand Strategist (2018) · Digital Marketing Diploma, BrainStation (2021) · Section4 Certified Brand Strategist (2022) · Creatives in Tech Leadership Cohort, QueerTech × CMF (2024)
Shopify The QT Podcast Mastercard BrainStation
· contact

Tell me which lane you're hiring for.

Content systems, AI content operations, knowledge management, information architecture, content design, marketing, or something that doesn't have a clean name yet. I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right person, and who is if I'm not.

Montreal hybrid or remote across Canada · full-time or fractional

dae courtney. A certainty craft site · Montreal · they / them · artifacts on request
Skip to content
dae courtney.
· overview

I make complicated things playable.

Content systems that run without me.
AI content operations, with the governance attached.
Knowledge people can actually reach into.
Writing that holds up under scrutiny.
Marketing that tells the truth and still performs.
Ten years making things people finish.
Sound for bodies in space.

Playable means you can pick it up and use it without a manual: a knowledge base, a prompt library, a job post, a platformer video game. Content systems, AI content operations, knowledge architecture, marketing and employer brand, with years of production work underneath. Click a filter and this page refocuses on the lane you're hiring for.

I build the governed layer: a voice and terminology cascade across seven brands, an 87-prompt library, an 18-check rules engine, and the review gates that made legal comfortable. The first on-brand article took over four weeks. Now five days.

Prompt libraries with structured metadata and a regeneration pipeline. An 18-check rules engine, eight checks written from scratch. A 24-category legal risk scanner. RAG grounding assets with answerability KPIs. The AI image policy drafted across Design, Marketing and engineering. Built in regulated healthcare, where a confidently wrong sentence reaches a nurse mid-shift who trusts it.

I wrote the access-tier policy for a multi-agency knowledge base: role-based collections across five sensitivity tiers, public through leadership-only. Shipped, in daily use. Alongside it, a 270+ term bilingual vocabulary grounded in research with the schedulers who use those words daily.

Senior copywriter by title, systems architect by scope. Product microcopy and release notes in a regulated healthcare product, executive communications co-written with a CTO, a nursing reference shipped as EPUB and PWA from one source, campaign copy across the agency brands.

Employer brand at Shopify: pivotal contributor to the EVP from kickoff to launch with C-suite stakeholders, campaign copy across EMEA, APAC and the Americas, 76% LinkedIn growth, intern to manager in about five months. Plus the unglamorous plumbing, analytics remediation, and the job-post indexing fix that decides whether anyone sees the post.

Producer, end to end. The QT Podcast: 30+ guests including Lightspeed's CEO, sponsored by Canada Media Fund, Google Chrome and RBC, reaching 18% of an 8,000-person network. A six-person crew directed on a conference floor. Sound design at Judson Church, The Kitchen and the Musée des beaux-arts.

Composer and sound designer for dance, theatre and installation, 2013 to now: MAI and Danse-Cité, La Chapelle, Agora de la danse, The Kitchen and Judson Church in New York, the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. I do this because I want to, and I would keep doing it whatever else I was hired for. The black room below is the archive.

dae.courtney@gmail.com LinkedIn
Dae Courtney Dae Courtney
filter Explore another lane
the practice behind all of this certainty craft.
the practice behind all of this
certainty craft.

Research a world until you can hear its true language, then build the smallest structure that keeps that language true after you leave.

The structure has a name: Core Content, the governed layer where approved claims live with their source, owner, reuse rules and expiry. Every surface inherits the truth from there instead of improvising a version of it. Deliberately the smallest thing that holds: governance that outgrows the problem stops being used, and an unused system drifts.

Bespoke each time, because nobody's content problem is shaped like anyone else's. A staffing agency's true sentence is not a bank's. Research first; the structure is only what it takes to carry the answer.

Everything here is that practice at different altitudes. A taxonomy, a job post, a help centre, a podcast episode, a score for a dance piece, each is a world researched until its true language shows up, then given a structure it can survive in. Four moves, every time.

01 · listen
Go into the domain far enough to hear how people actually talk. Surveys with schedulers. Thirty interviews on a microphone. A rehearsal room.
02 · find the true sentence
The claim that is accurate, sayable and worth repeating. “Onboarding takes two to six weeks, set by credential verification”, not the version that tested better.
03 · build somewhere for it to live
Source, owner, expiry, review gate. Cascade, controlled vocabulary, access tier. Only as much machinery as the claim needs to stay true.
04 · hand it over
It has to run without me. A non-technical team using it daily is the only proof that counts, and why the work survived the company being acquired.
· in depth

How the system actually holds

The layer stack is the shape of it. These are the rules that make the shape reliable enough for a non-technical team to run it without me in the room.

01
Resolution is deterministic
A manifest names brand, surface, audience and brief. The compiler walks the stack and emits one fully resolved prompt. It makes no model calls: same manifest, same prompt, every time.
02
Voice is a diff, compliance is a ratchet
Each brand declares only how it departs from the baseline. Compliance and controlled terminology are floors that may only tighten as you move down the cascade. Strictest wins.
03
Voice can be bypassed, traceably
Sometimes the right answer is to break the house style. The system allows it explicitly and records that a person chose it, rather than pretending it never happens.
04
Four gates before a reader
Preflight for unresolved authoring markers and open decisions, a 24-category legal risk scan, a findability scan, then stakeholder sign-off. Review sits inside the cycle, not bolted on after it.
05
Agents propose, operators promote
Nothing publishes itself. Every status change is a person deciding, on purpose, with the labels in front of them.
06
Built to survive its owner
Designed brand-independent from the start. The company was acquired in 2026; the architecture has since been generalized and still works.
· in depth

AI operations with the governance attached

Everyone can generate. The harder work is making generation accountable enough to use in a regulated industry, where being confidently wrong has consequences.

01
A prompt library versioned like code
87 governed production prompts with YAML metadata, a flat prefixed tag namespace, and a Python regeneration pipeline. You can diff it, review it, and roll it back.
02
Eighteen automated editorial checks
Ten adapted, eight written from scratch for this industry's real failure modes: Quebec Localization, Nurse Sensitivity, De-Patronize, Confidence-Legal.
03
Provenance tiers on every fact
Each claim carries a tier checked against a registry of who may vouch for what. An agent can propose research; an agent can never be recorded as a human source.
04
Grounding assets for retrieval
Per page: claims with sources, FAQ pairs, disambiguation blocks, and glossaries with synonyms, written for the assistant answering on your behalf as much as for the reader.
05
Measurement, honestly labelled
Answerability, citation rate and hallucination thresholds were designed and specified. The company was acquired mid-rollout, so these are the measurement system, not achieved results.
06
Policy drafted across three functions
Drafted the company AI Image Policy across Design, Marketing and engineering. The slow half of AI work is consent between functions.
· in depth

Knowledge someone can reach into

A knowledge base is a promise about who gets to know what. In most organizations that promise gets made by accident, one permission setting at a time. This one was written down.

01
Five tiers, on purpose
Role-based collections crossed with T1 public through T5 leadership-only, scaled across a multi-agency organization. Excluding someone became explicit governance rather than an artifact of setup.
02
A 270+ term controlled vocabulary
Bilingual EN/FR, governed against the platform data model so the words in the product, the help centre and the schedule finally agree.
03
Grounded in primary research
A bilingual scheduler survey asked the people doing the work to rate data categories by how useful they were for an actual decision. The taxonomy follows their answers, not mine.
04
Work governance, not just content
An Asana portfolio, project and task model with required fields and quarterly housekeeping. That is the part that keeps a system alive after the launch enthusiasm fades.
05
Information architecture came first
Alejandro led the IA and got the rare thing almost no product team gets: structure defined before anyone drew a screen. I followed his lead and kept building into it.
· in depth

Writing where the words are the interface

In a regulated product, microcopy is not decoration. It is the last place a promise gets made before someone acts on it.

01
A toggle is a consent threshold
Profile visibility in a healthcare product is not a settings control. I flagged pre-toggle access as a consent violation and wrote the UI to say what it actually does.
02
Honest about the wait
The credential check takes two to six weeks. The interface says two to six weeks, instead of implying instant approval and spending the trust later.
03
Structure over drop zones
A credential hub written as a structured form rather than a place to throw files. Resumable two-sided onboarding, so leaving mid-flow is not a failure state.
04
Release notes and executive voice
Release notes inside the product; leadership communications co-written with the CTO and credited publicly.
05
One source, two formats
eSoluguide, a nursing clinical reference, shipped as both EPUB and PWA from a single source, with the commit history to prove it.
· in depth

Marketing that survives contact with the truth

Employer brand is the discipline where overclaiming is punished fastest: the new hire finds out in week two. That constraint made me better at all the rest of it.

01
An EVP from kickoff to launch
Pivotal contributor at Shopify, working with C-suite stakeholders, plus the Top Employer designation application.
02
Three continents, one promise
Paid campaign copy across EMEA, APAC and the Americas, including a localized Singapore campaign built from audience research rather than translated from headquarters.
03
76% follower growth
On the employer brand channel, alongside the EVP launch. Intern to manager in about five months.
04
The plumbing nobody claims
Diagnosed JS-rendered ATS portals invisible to Google for Jobs and Indeed, then built an audit agent for it. Your best job post is worth nothing if nobody can find it.
05
Analytics found dark, then fixed
Four of five properties were not reporting. I wrote the master remediation plan: maturity model, federated reporting, content-to-hire attribution, Law 25 and PIPEDA framing.
06
One bounded test beat the debate
Instead of arguing about agency value, the team paused a single agency’s ad spend for a month. Nothing moved. Broad spend came in-house; targeted spend was kept for hard-to-fill specialized roles.
· in depth

Producing, end to end

Production is where I learned that a system is only good if the person inside it can forget it exists.

01
The whole producer scope
Preproduction, vocal coaching, intro and outro craft, music procurement, in-studio and on-site recording, training others to record at home, script review, season strategy.
02
And the post, and the release
Denoise, mix, transitions, stingers. Then go-to-market, captions, podcast ads and partnership audits.
03
Thirty guests worth keeping
30+ tech leaders including Lightspeed CEO Dax Dasilva. Canada Media Fund, Google Chrome and RBC sponsored the show; it reached 18% of an 8,000-person network.
04
A conference directed on the floor
Content and branding strategy for the QT Qonference, a six-person media crew directed on site, and 4× ROI on the event’s marketing spend.
05
Findable afterwards
A Hivebrite media resource centre, so everything we made could be found by the people it was made for.
06
Ten years of technical direction
AV in performance venues, which is mostly the craft of knowing, in advance, what is going to go wrong.
· in depth

The work I would do anyway

Twelve years of it. Dancers, actors, circus performers, dark rooms, one shot a night.

01
Composition and sound design, 2013–2025
For dance, theatre, circus and installation: MAI, Danse-Cité, La Chapelle, Agora de la danse, The Kitchen and Judson Church in New York, the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, the SAT.
02
Build it so they can forget it
The instrument is not the point. Someone has to be able to play it, in the room, on the night, without thinking about it. That is the entire job.
03
Teaching the tools
Fonofone workshops with Yves Daoust; work with the SenseLab. Mostly it is putting an instrument in someone’s hands and then getting out of the way.
04
Installation work
Assistant on Drumming by Steve Reich under Maxime Rioux; Ghost Hole IV and V in Toronto.
05
Still doing it
The most recent piece opened in 2025. Not a former life, and not a hobby that explains the day job. A parallel practice with its own collaborators and its own standards.
· featured work

Three that carry the argument

drift detector · illustrative

Two pages. One organization. Both saying different things.

An ungoverned content estate from the inside: a made-up staffing company, real failure modes. Press the button to compile both pages through a voice cascade and a claim registry.

/careers · owner brand

We onboard new nurses in as little as 48 hours.Onboarding takes two to six weeks, set by credential verification. Our talent partnersclinical schedulers work with you directly.

/help · operating brand

Credential review generally takes four to six weeks.Onboarding takes two to six weeks, set by credential verification. Your care coordinatorclinical scheduler will be in touch.

2 contradictions · 1 unsourced claim · 1 uncontrolled term. Nobody wrote these to disagree. The structure let them.

One claim record, one source, one owner, one expiry, inherited by both surfaces. The term resolves to the controlled vocabulary. That is Core Content, and the whole job.

Website Help centre Product UI Job post Onboarding
one claim record
Onboarding takes two to six weeks
owner: credentialing lead
source: provincial verification SLA
review: quarterly
reuse: adapt per surface
Premier Health of America · 2024–2026 flagship

A content compiler, not a content generator

The first on-brand piece took over four weeks, almost none of it writing. So voice, compliance, terminology and audience were defined once as versioned layers and compiled deterministically into one prompt per task. Voice is a diff; compliance is a ratchet that only tightens. Agents propose, operators promote, nothing publishes itself. Brief to published became five days.

Shipped and in daily use by a non-technical team. The company was acquired in 2026; the architecture was built portable and has since been generalized. Adoption was uneven across functions, which is the honest part: people had their own work to hold together. So the system's guarantees do not depend on how fast anyone picks up the tooling.

Read the full case study
core
Org-wide baseline voice plus non-negotiable values. Inherited by everything, changed rarely.
brand
Owner brand → operating brands → sub-brands. Each declares only how it departs.
surface
Format rules: blog post, press release, product microcopy, release note.
aspects
Compliance, controlled terminology and audience, attached by the task rather than remembered by a person.
what ships with every piece
One content piece
article, help centre page, product page
claims → sourcesFAQ pairsdisambiguationglossary + synonymsEN / FR paritystructured markup
legible to a person
Skimmable, sourced, and it says the same thing as the last page they read.
legible to a machine
Retrievable and quotable, so an answer engine cites you instead of guessing.
A scored rubric decides whether a piece is done. Same checklist every time, so the standard does not depend on who wrote it.
premier health of america · findability

Search, AI answers and site search are one problem

Someone with a question at eleven at night asks Google, or an assistant, or the help centre. Same person, same worry. I wrote the findability spec unifying technical SEO, E-E-A-T, grounding assets, bilingual parity gates and ISO 9001 document control, then ran a hackathon that produced a repeatable workflow scoped to two gold-standard posts a month, no added headcount.

Answerability KPIs designed and specified. The company was acquired mid-rollout, so these are presented as the measurement system, not achieved results.

Read the full case study →
shopify · CHCA · employer brand

An employer promise, kickoff to launch

A job post is someone deciding whether to move their life, so accuracy beats enthusiasm. At Shopify: pivotal contributor to the EVP with C-suite stakeholders, campaign copy across EMEA, APAC and the Americas including a researched Singapore localization, 76% follower growth, the Top Employer application. At CHCA: five nurse retention personas. Also diagnosed JS-rendered ATS portals invisible to Google for Jobs, then built an audit agent.

Read the full case study →
Shopify employer value proposition campaign ad
Campaign copy, Shopify EVP launch
· more work

The rest of the work

Five tiers of access, governed on purpose
premier health of america · guru
Full case study →
Role-based collections crossed with T1–T5 sensitivity tiers, so excluding someone is a decision rather than an accident of setup. Alongside it, a 270+ term bilingual vocabulary grounded in scheduler research, and an Asana governance model with required fields.
Rewriting every word on the websites
premier health of america · website copy
I rewrote the copy across the company's websites, the group site and its operating brands together. The same claims had been saying different things for years. Rewriting them made the drift visible; the voice cascade and claim records were built to keep it from coming back.
Information architecture before the first mockup
liphe · information architecture
Full case study →
Alejandro led the IA and defined structure before anyone drew a screen, the rare discipline almost no product team gets. I followed his lead and built into it: data-model and workflow layers, the design system in one place, content structures on top.
Cutting the agencies, bringing marketing in-house
premier health of america · marketing operations
Rather than debate whether the agency relationships still earned their fee, the team ran one reversible test: pause a single agency's ad spend for a month. Nothing moved. Broad spend came in-house; targeted spend stayed for hard-to-fill specialized roles. Figures withheld pending confirmation.
Microcopy that tells the regulatory truth
liphe · product content
Full case study →
A profile-visibility toggle in a healthcare product is a consent threshold, not a settings control. The interface now admits a credential check takes two to six weeks instead of implying instant approval. Plus release notes, a credential hub as structured form, resumable onboarding, and eSoluguide shipped as EPUB and PWA from one source.
A conference, directed on the floor
qt qonference · event content production
Full case study →
Content and branding strategy, a six-person media crew directed on site, video delivered from the event, 4× ROI on its marketing spend. Ten years of AV technical direction underneath it, mostly the craft of knowing in advance what will go wrong.
Running the room, not just the channel
queertech · community operations
Full case study →
Social engagement up 50% as Digital Marketing Manager. A network of 8,000+ tech professionals to serve rather than broadcast at, a Hivebrite resource centre so members could find what we made, and Shopify Alumni community management before that.
Learning infrastructure for 25+ organizations
caitlin lee consulting · cosimu
Full case study →
Curriculum design, client networks, learning libraries, video courses and skill-tracking tools for social justice and direct service organizations. Earlier: a province-wide communications network in Quebec's English education system, and edtech coaching in Quebec and Hong Kong.
A brand video and a game about being a nurse
ai-supported media · watch and play below
Produced, prompted, edited and wrote a healthcare group's brand video: ninety seconds, live on their homepage. Built Timesheet Rush, a nurse-empathy platformer, with Claude as producer and prompter. Drafted the company AI Image Policy across Design, Marketing and engineering.
Conversations built to be finished
qt podcast · listen below
Full case study →
Hosted and produced end to end: 30+ tech leaders including Lightspeed CEO Dax Dasilva, sponsors including Canada Media Fund, Google Chrome and RBC, reaching 18% of an 8,000-person network. Before that, ten years of sound for dance, theatre and film, and askîwan with Tyson Houseman.
· watch & play

Watch one, play one

This is the part of AI I actually find exciting, and it isn't faster copy. Interactive media used to need a team, a quarter and a budget, so a content person with a point to make wrote a memo instead. Now the argument can be a thing you play.

watch
The brand video

Produced, prompted, edited and written by me. Ninety seconds, live on the client's homepage.

playable
Timesheet Rush

Getting a timesheet approved is, for an agency nurse, genuinely one of the hardest parts of the week. Wrong week selected. Missing signature. A coordinator who left at four. It's a small indignity repeated hundreds of times, and it doesn't survive being put on a slide. So it's a joke you have to play instead. The timesheet is the boss level.

Built with Claude as producer and prompter. On a computer, click the panel so it takes the keyboard, then use the arrow keys and space. On a phone, tap Play and use the on-screen buttons.

Open full screen
The Timesheet Rush play field: a nurse below seven weekday columns, ready to catch falling shift blocks
Timesheet Rush
· the podcast
The QT Podcast

The people who said yes

I hosted and produced the QT Podcast end to end. Booking a CEO is one skill; getting them to say something worth keeping is a different one. These are their words from the season I ran, quoted from the published episodes and linked back to them. They were generous with them.

Also on Apple Podcasts
Dax Dasilva

“There's a magic to our community. There are ways that we can inspire and influence the journey that your company is going to have that's unique. So don't be shy, be proud.”

Dax Dasilva
CEO and founder, Lightspeed Commerce
David Cardon

“Your network is a very powerful part of the way that your career progresses. These kinds of conferences are amazing spaces for people to connect with each other, share ideas, and develop together as professionals.”

David Cardon
Regional Lead, Morgan Stanley Montreal
Florencia Herra Vega

“There's a joy in finding people who understand the same things as you. There's joy to be found in difference, in not being in your comfort zone and sharing something new with people.”

Florencia Herra Vega
CTO, AlleyCorp Nord
Sam Naylor

“My career shifted from something that felt like I was hiding, into something where I'm trying really hard to push the boundaries of what a professional looks like, talks like, and exists like.”

Sam Naylor
Chief of staff, Deloitte
Jess Malz

“Some of the most influential leaders I've ever seen lead with humility, lead by asking questions, lead by listening. Questions encourage self-reflection, they empower others to take ownership.”

Jess Malz
Founder, INDO
On set during a QT Podcast recording

“With so many different people and with so many different stories, we hope to contribute towards building a story format that honours our community's diversity.”

Dae Courtney
Host and producer
Madness: the Podcast cover art Apple Podcasts rating: 4.8 out of 5, 308 ratings Also co-producer of Madness: the Podcast, featured on Michael Moore's Rumble.
· on stage

Sound for bodies in space

Twelve years composing and performing sound for dance, theatre and installation, from artist-run lofts to The Kitchen. Live work mostly: one room, one night, no undo. It has its own history, its own collaborators and its own standards, and it is still running.

Performance documentation from [guāng yīn] at MAI, 2025: a performer in a pink fur hat seen through the glass of a claw machine packed with boxed prizes.
MAI + Danse-Cité · 2025 most recent

[guāng yīn], the lightest dark is darker than the darkest light

Nien Tzu Weng's immersive solo, three years in the making, weaves performance with video mapping, augmented reality and laser work, in a dream landscape drawn from her Taiwanese roots. I built the sound. Alongside me in the credits: video mapping and mixed-reality artists, a rope specialist, and a Laser Girl.

Show page at MAI
Performance documentation from askîwan: a darkened stage lit in blue, a projected mountain landscape behind a camera on a tripod, with bowls of water and scattered material on the floor.
with Tyson Houseman · OFFTA, La Chapelle, PuSh · touring

askîwan ᐊᐢᑮᐊᐧᐣ

An operatic multimedia performance created and directed by Cree artist Tyson Houseman, built from live video feeds, object performance at miniature scale, and mountainscapes standing in for deep, non-linear geologic time. I composed the electroacoustic score and perform it live, under baritone lyrics sung in nêhiyawêwin, with viola da gamba. It has toured across several seasons and venues. Show page

selected earlier work
SHE'S LATE // A CIRCUS SHOW
Experimental circus of impossible tasks with Nien Tzu Weng and Camille Lacelle-Wilsley · Double Fantasy · La Chapelle · 2023 · Show page
RAAKSHAS: A BAD TIME FOR GODS · OUT OF BARK AND BONE
Sound conceptions with Roger Sinha · Agora de la danse · 2020
Drumming, by Steve Reich
Installation assistant under Maxime Rioux · 2017
Vinyl Retro
With Karen Bernard and Barbara Mahler · The Kitchen, New York · 2016
League of Lady Wrestlers: Castlemania
Société des Arts Technologiques · showcased by Vice · 2015
Reuse, Recycle
With Karen Bernard · Judson Church, New York · 2015
MORE THAN HERE: Midnight to 4AM
With Mi-Jeong Lee · Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal · 2014

Full performance CV on request · 2013–2025

· the numbers

The numbers, with caveats attached

Every one traceable to documented evidence

Hover or focus any figure for its source

See the twelve numbers
5 days
brief-to-publish, down from over four weeks
Premier Health of America, 2024–2026 · compiler case study · claim record with documented evidence
87
governed production prompts, versioned
Prompt library: YAML metadata, flat prefixed tags, Python regeneration pipeline · counted at handover
18
automated editorial checks, 8 written from scratch
Rules engine · originals include Quebec Localization, Nurse Sensitivity, De-Patronize, Confidence-Legal
24
legal risk categories screened pre-publication
Pre-publication legal risk scanner, regulated healthcare · category list on request
270+
term bilingual taxonomy, grounded in scheduler research
Controlled vocabulary EN/FR, governed against the platform data model · bilingual scheduler survey
5 tiers
of knowledge access, T1 public to T5 leadership
Guru access tier policy · role-based collections × T1–T5 · shipped, multi-agency org
76%
employer brand LinkedIn growth at Shopify
Employer brand channel, Shopify tenure 2021–2022 · follower growth, channel analytics
6
person media crew directed on the conference floor
QT Qonference · video captured and delivered from the event · the crew behind the 4× ROI on marketing spend
30+
tech leaders produced on the QT Podcast
QT Podcast, produced end to end · includes Lightspeed CEO Dax Dasilva · episode listed below
8,000+
professional network served at QueerTech
QueerTech 2SLGBTQ+ tech community · 18% target-audience podcast reach, 50% engagement growth
1 source
nursing reference shipped as EPUB and PWA
eSoluguide · single-source publishing to two formats · commit history
4 of 5
analytics properties found dark, then a remediation plan
Analytics audit, 5 properties · master remediation plan: maturity model, federated reporting, Law 25 / PIPEDA
· where i’ve worked

Where I’ve worked

See the full history
Sr. Copywriter (Content Systems)Oct 2024 – now
Premier Health of America · Montreal
Knowledge-base access architecture, the bilingual vocabulary, the prompt library and rules engine, the findability spec, the analytics remediation plan, product microcopy, the AI image policy, executive communications with the CTO. Documented scope beyond the title.
Digital Marketing Manager & Content Producer2023 – 2024
QueerTech · Montreal
The QT Podcast end to end, the Qonference media crew and its 4× ROI on marketing spend, 50% engagement growth, an 8,000+ network served rather than broadcast at.
Client Network & Learning Lead2022 – 2023
Caitlin Lee Consulting · 25+ organizations served
Employer Brand Marketing Manager2021 – 2022
Shopify · remote, Canada · intern to manager in ~5 months
Pivotal contributor to the EVP from kickoff to launch with C-suite stakeholders; campaigns across EMEA, APAC and the Americas; 76% LinkedIn growth; the Top Employer application.
Freelance Producer & Marketer2014 – 2024
Brand and social for The Weather Holds, an artist who is themself a Juno-award-winning producer. Audio at the Musée des beaux-arts, Judson Church and The Kitchen in New York. Co-producer of Madness: the Podcast.
Communications Specialist2019
COSIMU · Quebec's English education system; edtech coaching in Quebec and Hong Kong

“crafted with the help of the amazing Dae Courtney”

public credit on a CTO's leadership posts, co-written
The rest of it
Four years running a four-person construction crew: tiling, framing, drywall, hiring and training included. A Mastercard × BrainStation hackathon win, with seven teams and twenty-four hours, and an accessible-security concept presented to Mastercard's Global Head of R&D. Youth work at YMCA Coyote Camp and C-Vert. Formal training in electroacoustics and computer music, which is where the systems instinct came from.
We won! ribbon from the hackathon deck Mastercard x BrainStation hackathon lockup
Practice
Content systems and governance · information architecture and taxonomy · knowledge management (Guru) · AI content operations and prompt engineering · UX writing and product content · findability, SEO and AI retrieval readiness · employer brand and recruitment marketing · analytics architecture · privacy compliance framing (Law 25, PIPEDA) · bilingual content systems (EN primary, FR parity governance)
Tools
Guru, SharePoint, Asana, Notion · Claude and structured prompt systems · GA4, Looker, Tableau, Funnel.io · Google / Meta / LinkedIn Ads · Semrush, Screaming Frog · Figma, Adobe Suite, Canva · Git, Framer, Kotobee
Credentials
BA Communications, Concordia (2017) · Ph.Creative Certified Employer Brand Strategist (2018) · Digital Marketing Diploma, BrainStation (2021) · Section4 Certified Brand Strategist (2022) · Creatives in Tech Leadership Cohort, QueerTech × CMF (2024)
Shopify The QT Podcast Mastercard BrainStation
· contact

Tell me which lane you're hiring for.

Hiring for content systems?

Hiring for AI content operations?

Hiring for knowledge and IA?

Hiring a writer who ships structure?

Hiring for marketing or employer brand?

Hiring a producer?

Programming, commissioning, collaborating?

Content systems, AI content operations, knowledge management, information architecture, content design, marketing, or something that doesn't have a clean name yet. I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right person, and who is if I'm not.

The ninety-second version: a voice and terminology cascade across seven brands; brief-to-published cut from over four weeks to five working days; review gates that made legal comfortable. Shipped, in daily use by a non-technical team.

The ninety-second version: 87 governed prompts with provenance tiers; an 18-check rules engine, eight checks written from scratch; a 24-category legal risk scan before anything reaches a reader. Built in regulated healthcare.

The ninety-second version: a five-tier access model across a multi-agency knowledge base, shipped; a 270+ term bilingual controlled vocabulary grounded in scheduler research; an Asana governance model people actually keep current.

The ninety-second version: product microcopy that tells the regulatory truth; a nursing reference shipped as EPUB and PWA from one source; executive communications co-written with a CTO who credited me publicly.

The ninety-second version: Shopify's EVP from kickoff to launch with C-suite stakeholders; campaigns across EMEA, APAC and the Americas; 76% follower growth; intern to manager in about five months.

The ninety-second version: 30+ guests produced end to end, sponsors including Canada Media Fund, Google Chrome and RBC; a six-person media crew directed on a conference floor; ten years of sound before any of it.

Composing and performing electroacoustic scores for dance, theatre and multimedia performance, most recently askîwan with Tyson Houseman and [guāng yīn] with Nien Tzu Weng. Open to new collaborations and commissions.

Montreal hybrid or remote across Canada · full-time or fractional

dae courtney. A certainty craft site · Montreal · they / them · artifacts on request