About--Just the Facts
Rebecca “Reba” Riley holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology & Communications from The Ohio State University. She is Dayton, Ohio native but currently writes from her home in Columbus, where she sells manufactured construction products. Reba uses her education and work experience to write about sales & marketing, architecture, construction/renovation, LEED and “green” initiatives, but she is always ready to tackle unfamiliar topics for clients of her freelance writing consultancy, Reba Riley Ink. She believes outside perspective is often beneficial because it allows the writer to see information from a layman’s perspective and translate it to an interesting read. Reba Riley Ink specializes in case studies and writing articles for trade journals/industry magazines, as well as internal communications and advertorials.
Reba enjoys writing humorous essays and articles about health & fitness while working on her Thirty by Thirty Book Project. You can read more about her 30x30 experiences on her Blog.
About—The Back Story
Reba began her writing career in the fourth grade with an essay entitled “Why I Love America”. It contained colorful penciled flags in place of various vowels, and won a regional award for “Creative Content”. The prize was a 1,000-piece puzzle and, though she quickly quit trying to solve it, her love of putting together clever phrases was born.
Reba wrote her way through high school newspapers, yearbooks and essays, pausing just long enough to graduate and trade in her typewriter for a laptop. She briefly attended a Bible college in Pennsylvania, then moved to Colorado Springs to study ministry training. Upon realizing her current life path no longer fit (read more about this at Thirty by Thirty Blog), she settled at Ohio State University, where she majored in Psychology & Communications. In her senior year, Reba was honored to be chosen as a weekly opinion essay columnist for Ohio State’s daily newspaper The Lantern, where she took her job--to make the opinion page less serious--very seriously. With a daily readership of 30,000 people, Reba’s essays were exposed to a wide variety of critics, but she earned accolades from students, faculty and alumni alike. Her highest compliment came from a Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Roach who said, “You have great talent. Keep writing!”
Keep writing she did. After graduation Reba made the leap from minor to Major League writer; she began writing professionally and building a business client base. She formed Reba Riley Ink in 2008, and began writing her book and blog in 2011.
