TA DA – Our New Website

Geoff Forman

Internet Marketing Specialist

Geoff spearheaded this enterprise and persevered through delays and setbacks to see it realized. He recognized that our old site had broken and obsolete pieces that couldn’t easily be fixed, and that a new site was in order. The new site will allow for more effective marketing strategies – expanding our reach beyond local markets, increase the number of users and give current users more reasons to return. We have always had great content, now we have new features to showcase it. Geoff lives in New Jersey and works from there. Last summer, he came to Buffalo to attend the Adoption STAR Annual Picnic and to offer the staff a “Teach and Learn” workshop on internet marketing. Later in the day, he met with Michele Fried, Michael Hill, Kristin Ackerman and Lesa Ferguson to lobby for the new site. At this time, he suggested we enlist the services of his friend, co-worker, collaborator and gifted coder Nicole Koenitzer who ultimately designed our new site.

Nicole Koenitzer

Designer and Developer

Nicole Koenitzer is an artist, designer, and developer. She works full time as an UI/X and Visual designer for Edmund Optics (where she works with Geoff). She also serves on the board of AIGA Philadelphia with the title of Interactive Director. Her freelance brand, nicolekoenitzer.com, has a wide variety of design and art clients and projects. She has designed numerous sites. In her spare time she is fine arts painter, creating large scale mixed media abstract paintings up to ten feet by five feet. Her work has been exhibited in many galleries and events nationally. As you walk through the new site, you will notice that she preserved Adoption STAR’s look and feel while adding so many snazzy new components – a more expansive home slideshow that links to our most informative and useful pages, quizzes, fun rollovers, space optimization code and much more. She stuck with us through the entire process in order to give much needed help and assistance as we utilized the new code and moved the content into the new format.

Lesa Quale Ferguson

New Media Specialist

Lesa Quale Ferguson brought the content into the new format. With all the wiz-bang code Nicole put in place, Lesa was able to transfer material from the old site and give it a fresh format. She has also designed some upcoming blog posts with the new code to make fun and educational content which will be featured in the weeks ahead. For her, this project has been an amazing learning opportunity and she appreciates Nicole’s and Geoff’s willingness to share their time, talent, and abilities with her. Lesa’s last day will be February 21st and she’s looking forward to being a stay at home mom again and taking that time to learn more about website development.