I’m Amy Dutton. I live at the intersection of design & development.

I currently live outside of Nashville with my husband and our three adorable (if I do say so myself) kids: Isaac (9), Adele (8), and Emma (6). As if things weren’t exciting enough, we also adopted a retired racing greyhound and a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel.

If I’m not sitting front of my computer, I’m hanging out with friends and family, binging on Netflix / Hulu / Prime / Disney+ / AppleTV (all the streaming!), playing Settlers or Nertz, or reading and drinking coffee.

Short Story Long

When I was in 8th grade, I built my first website, using Netscape Navigator’s web tools. I decided it would be a good idea to pull all the animated gifs on the Internet and put them in one central location. With so many animated images, my site was enough to give anyone a seizure. Let’s not even talk about file size and load times. But, I like to believe that I was before my time. Curated content and animated gifs anyone? Sounds like today’s Giphy! -- And I still have a soft spot in my heart for a good animated gif.

I graduated from college in 2006 from Middle Tennessee State University with a degree in Radio / TV Broadcasting and a concentration in Animation.

After college, I went and worked for a web company on Music Row (in Nashville, TN) called echo (owned by Ticketmaster). We built websites for artists and entertainers. It’s still fun to name drop in conversations. (*Cough* Janet Jackson, Taylor Swift, Kelly Clarkson, Counting Crows, Ice Cube, and Kanye West — just to name a few). I worked there for a year, before going to LifeWay. It was a good thing, too, because two months after I left, Ticketmaster dissolved echo.

I worked at LifeWay for four years in the Training and Events Production department. We did print, web, and video support for all the various events LifeWay produces across the country. I was an art director, serving five different departments, ranging in demographics from young children to senior adults.

In January 2013, I left LifeWay to run my own agency, Ah Ha Creative. For six and a half years, I had the privilege of partnering with a variety of clients and creative agencies to make some really cool projects.

In July 2019, I joined ZEAL’s team as a Senior UI/UX Designer and Frontend Developer. Eventually, I was promoted to Director of Design where I led a team of product designers and frontend engineers.

That brings us to now. In June 2023, I joined Preston-Werner Ventures where I server as a lead maintainer on the RedwoodJS Core Team.