Jim Fabry

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Communications

MY WORK AT STANFORD UNIVERSITYMy resume (updated 2026)I hold a communications role in the Department of Management Science & Engineering (MS&E) at Stanford University. I act as a generalist whose responsibilities encompass those typically found in the roles of technical writer, journalist, social media manager, event coordinator, web manager, and content strategist.Essentially, my role is to answer the question, "What is management science and engineering?"To do so, I act as a web manager for MS&E's web site: https://msande.stanford.eduWhere I strategize, create, and curate content about the people and research in the department.Recent projects include:

I also serve as the department's social media manager on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.In addition, I write the department's bimonthly newsletter, act as a moderator for our alumni groups platform, co-produce the department's podcast, and more.PRIOR WORKI started my career on the technical communications team at Epic Systems, which makes electronic health record software. There, I wrote for both very technical back-end products as well as user-facing ones. I joined a process improvement team, which designed and implemented changes to alleviate workplace friction and deliver better products. I also honed my front-end web programming skills by developing an internal training tool in HTML, JavaScript, and PHP.During my time at Epic, I enrolled in a yoga teacher training, thinking that I might want to teach full time. I left Epic to pursue that dream, and quickly learned that I prefer to keep my passions and my income separate. It was a good learning experience, and the lessons in body-mind connection, communication, and self regulation that I gained from the training have been invaluable.After confirming that the 9-to-5 life is indeed for me, I got an administrative job at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, which is housed in the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I knew I wanted to move to California, and used that admin training to get a similar role at Stanford in 2016. I soon started to take on more of a communications role in addition to my admin responsibilities, and eventually my team allowed me to transition into the full-time comms role I hold today.

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Community

Photo: Los Angeles Coffee Crawl participants, May 2026LOS ANGELES COFFEE CRAWLI'm a big coffee nerd, and I've been to over 300 coffee shops in greater Los Angeles. I wanted to share that knowledge and meet like-minded people, so I started the Los Angeles Coffee Crawl. Crawls take a small group on a walking tour of five coffee shops in Hollywood, where I first lived when I moved to LA. We share drinks, both to keep the caffeine content to a reasonable amount and to have a shared experience as a group. It's incredibly rewarding.AUTHENTIC RELATING AND CIRCLINGWhen I was in the midst of my yoga teacher training, I learned about the practices of Authentic Relating and Circling, group meditation practices that aim to deepen human connection. I completed a facilitator training with Authentic Madison and have led workshops for the public and in corporate settings.AUTHENTIC INTUITIONI loved the "authentic" community so much that I wanted to contribute to it in some way. And part of my yoga teacher training also treated intuition as a developable skill, like sports or math, that one can improve upon with practice. I created "Authentic Intuition" as an organization that would share those practices with the public. The group disbanded after only a few workshops, but we seemed to make an impact in that short time.

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Music

Photo by Allie Folino.OUTPUTA few years ago, I set out to get back to fundamentals. Which meant learning cover songs:Best Part cover of Daniel Caesar
All I Have To Do Is Dream cover of Everly Brothers
The Nurse Who Loved Me cover of Failure
I've Just Seen A Face cover of The BeatlesFrom 2008-2016 I played bass and sang some lead, but mostly backup, vocals for rock band The Mood Manual:The Mood Manual on Spotify
Live performance at The Frequency in MadisonDuring that time I also completed my Bachelor of Music degree in music theory & composition at Lawrence University in Appleton, WI. There, I composed contemporary classical and electronic music that didn't quite speak to my spirit the way guitar music does. However, elements of my classical training show up in my output since then. You can hear it in musique concrete-inspired pieces, like Kelvin 1337 (The Mood Manual) and Aural Hygiene (standalone piece), the inverted chords in Architect (TMM), and the fugue about halfway through the epic Alchemy (TMM).AUDIO ENGINEERINGThe quality of a recording is the first thing I listen to in music. And I'm looking to develop my engineering skills with collaborations, both as a recording and mix engineer.I co-produced The Mood Manual's recordings with several excellent engineers who taught me many valuable skills. I engineered and mixed all of the cover videos above. And I engineered and mixed an album for a local band in my hometown while I was at university.INSPIRATIONMy musical output sounds most like the band Tool, and my three favorite artists (in no particular order) are Tool, Ethel Cain, and Steven Wilson (of Porcupine Tree fame). But I enjoy any recording that sounds excellent.In 2020, I wrote this far-from-exhaustive series of posts about albums that have inspired me:1. Blink 182 and System of a Down
2. Chevelle - Wonder What's Next
3. The Mars Volta and Three Days Grace
4. My Chemical Romance and The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
5. Tool - Lateralus
6. Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
7. Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and Infected Mushroom
8. Led Zeppelin and Tinariwen
9. Steven Wilson and Porcupine Tree
10. Beyoncé and Ariana GrandeJOURNEYI learned to play the trumpet because I sounded like an elephant.Specifically, as a young child several adults told me I should play the trumpet because I could make a sort of elephant noise with my lips (and I loved showing it to people), so when grade school came around, I did.I started learning guitar in middle school and I spent my early years creating my own music, loathe to learn others'. It was satisfying, but I imagine I missed out on learning opportunities that I could have gained by learning music written by past masters. I've only recently been returning to covers as a way to learn and rediscover my musical identity after moving to California in 2016.