Amanda Crystal Thompson
Portfolio and Samples
Amanda Crystal Thompson
Portfolio Highlights
7-YEAR-OLD COHASSET BOY OUTRUNS DIABETES AT JUNIOR TRI
COHASSET REMEMBERS WILL GOLDEN WITH 10TH ANNUAL TRIATHLON
COHASSET REMEMBERS WILL GOLDEN WITH 10TH ANNUAL TRIATHLON
About this Sample
- Style: Local news feature
- Publication: Cohasset Mariner
- Photo credit: Robin Chan
- Accolades: Sports reporting, 1st place, New England Newspaper and Press Association (NENPA), 2016
Excerpt
Without flinching, seven-year-old Shane Shaughnessy pricks his finger. a little bead of blood wells up and he dabs it onto a glucose test strip, eyes scanning the screen of the blood sugar meter that will notify him if he needs a dose of insulin.
Shane has been doing this for two years now. He was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes shortly after his fifth birthday. But that's not stopping him from competing in Cohasset's 2nd annual Junior Triathlon on Saturday.
COHASSET REMEMBERS WILL GOLDEN WITH 10TH ANNUAL TRIATHLON
COHASSET REMEMBERS WILL GOLDEN WITH 10TH ANNUAL TRIATHLON
COHASSET REMEMBERS WILL GOLDEN WITH 10TH ANNUAL TRIATHLON
About this Sample
- Style: Local news feature
- Publication: Cohasset Mariner
- Photo credit: Robin Chan
- Accolades: Obituaries, 3rd place, New England Newspaper and Press Association (NENPA), 2017
Excerpt
Sean and Judy Golden didn't want any casseroles after their son Will, a freshman and hockey player at Skidmore College, fell from a third-story roof and died while visiting a friend at the University of Delaware.
Instead, friends, family, and community members were encouraged to contribute to a scholarship fund. Now, people who want to honor and remember Will have another way to do so: they can participate in the annual Cohasset Triathlon on Sunday, June 26.
ONEWHEEL GT ISSUES FUEL SAFETY CONCERNS
COHASSET REMEMBERS WILL GOLDEN WITH 10TH ANNUAL TRIATHLON
FROM FIGHTING AL QAEDA IN IRAQ TO FIGHTING IDV BACK HOME
About this Sample
- Style: Blog article
- Publication: The International One Wheel Association
- Details: I researched, conducted interviews, and laid out this article in Wordpress.
Excerpt
The Onewheel GT is new, but is it improved? That depends who you ask.
Future Motion overhauled both the hardware and the software from the discontinued Onewheel XR, resulting in some great new features but also some substantial issues. Riders who received working boards seem overall happy with the new board. But some sources estimated as many as 25% of GT boards shipped with safety and functionality issues on warrantied components.
FROM FIGHTING AL QAEDA IN IRAQ TO FIGHTING IDV BACK HOME
FROM FIGHTING AL QAEDA IN IRAQ TO FIGHTING IDV BACK HOME
FROM FIGHTING AL QAEDA IN IRAQ TO FIGHTING IDV BACK HOME
About this Sample
- Style: Business feature
- Publication: PYMNTS.com
- Photo: Stock selected by editor
Excerpt
It was two weeks before Blake Hall’s unit would deploy for combat in Iraq, and suddenly he and his 32 men were being told they weren’t going into direct combat after all; they would instead be running a kill-and-capture mission, something none of them had trained for.
They were given new intelligence equipment and instructions to “figure it out.” Alarms blared in the dead of night, signaling 20 minutes to action; that’s all the time the soldiers had to get from deep sleep to action-ready, rolling out in pursuit of high-value targets, including members of Al-Qaeda.
Today, Hall has brought this military experience to bear in the business world as Founder and CEO of identity verification firm ID.me.
PICKING AMERICA'S NEXT TOP FI PAYMENTS INNOVATOR
FROM FIGHTING AL QAEDA IN IRAQ TO FIGHTING IDV BACK HOME
PICKING AMERICA'S NEXT TOP FI PAYMENTS INNOVATOR
About this Sample
- Style: Thought leadership, finance
- Publication: PYMNTS.com
- Photo: Innovation Readiness Playbook cover
Excerpt
Norway, one of the smallest countries participating in the 2018 Winter Olympics, is leading the way in terms of medals. Naturally, one might say, as the country has long winters and lots of snow. But this small nation was not always so successful. In 2006, it returned from the Winter Olympics with just two gold medals and its tail between its legs.
Then it got to work.
Financial institutions (FIs) can follow the same path to victory, says Karen Webster. The Innovation Readiness Playbook, produced in partnership with i2c, showed that size really doesn't matter when it comes to determining the top performers in FI payments innovation.
CAN AI REVERSE THE SUBSCRIPTION CHURN CURSE?
FROM FIGHTING AL QAEDA IN IRAQ TO FIGHTING IDV BACK HOME
PICKING AMERICA'S NEXT TOP FI PAYMENTS INNOVATOR
About this Sample
- Style: Thought leadership, finance
- Publication: PYMNTS.com
- Photo: Stock, selected by editor
Excerpt
“Recurring payments” is a bit of a misnomer, when approximately 13 percent of them don’t recur at all. Instead, the card on file gets declined, despite the fact that it was working fine last month, last week or whenever the customer subscribed to the product or content.
The merchant knows the card is good and the customer is in good standing but, for whatever reason, the payment isn’t going through. And, unless it gets resolved, that customer is about to churn out of the business whether he or she wants to or not.
With churn, it doesn’t matter if it’s voluntary or involuntary. Lost customers represent lost revenue, damaged subscriber relationships and declining reputation.
MASTERCARD® REAL TALK ON REAL-TIME PAYMENTS
PAYMENTS INNOVATION IS HERE... THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
FASTER PAYMENTS NEED FASTER IDENTITY VERIFICATION
About this Sample
- Style: Financial journalism, research writing
- Publication: Payments Journal by Mercator Advisory Group
- Photo: Supplied by client
Excerpt
With faster payments, speed catches all the headlines – but the value beyond immediacy deserves real talk on real-time payments. Behind the speed, the faster payments rails carry data and details as well as messaging abilities.
According to Mastercard, faster payments are fighting 40 years of inertia the U.S. payments infrastructure, plus half a dozen powerful myths and misconceptions that must be dispelled before real-time payments adoption can begin to ramp up. On top of that, there are no mandates pushing U.S. consumers, businesses and financial institutions to hurry up and get on the same page about it, as there have been in global markets.
FASTER PAYMENTS NEED FASTER IDENTITY VERIFICATION
PAYMENTS INNOVATION IS HERE... THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
FASTER PAYMENTS NEED FASTER IDENTITY VERIFICATION
About this Sample
- Style: Financial journalism, research writing
- Publication: Payments Journal by Mercator Advisory Group
- Photo: Supplied by client
Excerpt
It’s been said that faster payments lead to faster fraud, but what if identity verification and authentication technology become faster, too? More importantly: What if they become stronger?
According to David Barnhardt, EVP of Product at GIACT, “It is more important than ever to manage an identity lifecycle and manage that customer holistically.”
Here’s what that means, and why Barnhardt says it could – and should – change the landscape for any organization that facilitates payments.
PAYMENTS INNOVATION IS HERE... THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
PAYMENTS INNOVATION IS HERE... THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
PAYMENTS INNOVATION IS HERE... THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
About this Sample
- Style: Blog article
- Publication: Payments Journal by Mercator Advisory Group
- Photo: Supplied by client
Excerpt
57 percent of consumers are now willing to make payments via their connected car. This number, quoted by Mercator Advisory Group in a recent webinar with Discover® Global Network, reveals that inventors, tech-savvy users and early adopters are no longer the only ones on board with emerging payment methods and form factors; consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable with them, too.
Consumer engagement will open the door to new avenues of opportunity for all players in the payments space. Mercator Advisory Group sat down with Claudia Schaefer, Business Development Executive for Strategic Initiatives at Discover® Global Network, to discuss what that might look like.
REPORT: WHY PAYMENTS MATTER
THE NEW NORMAL: SODYO SCAN TECHNOLOGY DURING COVID AND BEYOND
PAYMENTS INNOVATION IS HERE... THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
About this Sample
- Style: Whitepaper, finance
- Publication: Modo Payments
- Photo: Supplied by client
Excerpt
Let’s talk about payments. Yeah yeah, you might not want to because it’s not the sexy side of online checkouts. But payments are so incredibly important to increasing your bottom line. Want to know a fast way to decrease costs? Optimize your payments.
You don’t have to take our word that payments are vital to your online business. Listen to Lyft. They saw that payments and transaction fees were significant enough to specifically call it out in their S-1 filing.
GATEWAYS: THE MAGICAL LINK BETWEEN YOU & YOUR CUSTOMER
THE NEW NORMAL: SODYO SCAN TECHNOLOGY DURING COVID AND BEYOND
THE NEW NORMAL: SODYO SCAN TECHNOLOGY DURING COVID AND BEYOND
About this Sample
- Style: Blog article
- Publication: Modo Payments
- Photo: Supplied by client
Excerpt
Payments gateways. They might not be as fun as other popular gateways in history and fiction – think Stargate, the Black Gate of Mordor, Platform 9 ¾ – but they’re basically the magical wardrobe to Narnia for the payments world.
On one side, you’ve got a consumer with a credit card who wants to complete a transaction and receive goods or services. On the other, you’ve got a business with a virtual cash register who also wants to complete that same purchase and deliver goods or services.
But without a gateway, they’re worlds apart. You’re tasked with bringing them together while guarding their interaction from any forces of evil – which in the payments world are usually fraudsters and poor customer experiences.
THE NEW NORMAL: SODYO SCAN TECHNOLOGY DURING COVID AND BEYOND
THE NEW NORMAL: SODYO SCAN TECHNOLOGY DURING COVID AND BEYOND
THE NEW NORMAL: SODYO SCAN TECHNOLOGY DURING COVID AND BEYOND
About this Sample
- Style: Blog article
- Publication: Sodyo
- Photo: Supplied by client
Excerpt
"What is normal?"
It’s always been an existential question, and thanks to Covid-19, the answer is more unclear than ever. But, also thanks to Covid-19, businesses have an opportunity to shape that answer going forward, while getting back on their feet here and now.
The long-distance capability of the Sodyo Marker compared to QR codes encourages six feet of social distance between customers and reduces or eliminates the need for them to touch anything other than their own smartphones. Contactless interactions can help businesses get back on their feet, even with partial staffing and partial operations, thus keeping things afloat while minimizing risk to their most important assets: their employees.