Max Ramirez (he/him) is a writer, editor, and swing dancer based in Oakland, California.
I’m a writer and editor by training. I have five years’ experience doing a mixture of writing, editing, and content marketing at startups with strong sensibilities for the importance of quality content. I currently work in the service industry, and in my spare time, I write for myself and teach Lindy Hop locally.
I write my own newsletter, First Alternate, about the contemporary history of Lindy Hop and my own thoughts on and experiences in the local, national and international scene.
Newsletter
2024-present
I have worked with the Criterion Collection, proofreading printed materials for new Blu-ray and DVD releases like Love & Basketball and Working Girls. I’m also seeking and taking on new clients!
Freelance work
2021-present
Grammarly
2018 – 2021
As Content Operations Manager at Grammarly, I oversee the production of our consumer blog at grammarly.com/blog. This includes sourcing freelance writers, assigning out monthly posts, and managing the posts from first draft to publish.
I have also edited and produced B2B, company, and product maketing content, as well as written or edited copy for ad channels, videos, and static images. I was also the sole copy editor for all consumer-facing social media channels up until the end of 2020.
Highlights of my time at Grammarly include:
Advocating for a move from an inefficient content marketing management tool to a platform more suited to my team’s needs, and getting cross-functional buy-in
Writing blogs about gender, language, and the product, partnering on strategy, and editing supporting materials for Grammarly’s 2018-2020 Pride campaigns
Giving an internal presentation on singular “they” gender pronouns to the team in Kyiv and San Francisco
Supporting Grammarly’s product through pieces for our Grammarly Spotlight series and our rollout of our updated assistant
Onboarding four new women writers to our bench of freelancers and advocating internally for their equitable pay
NerdWallet
2016 – 2017
As a Staff Writer on NerdWallet’s incredible, 90+ person Content team, I cut my teeth in data journalism as a partner to the Integrated Marketing team and wrote about the effectiveness of small-dollar moneymaking ventures on the Personal Finance vertical.
Some of my favorite bylines (as Veronica Ramirez) include:
Surveys for Money: Here’s What We Earned: a joint venture with my friends Laura McMullen and Devon Delfino, we spent over 50 hours testing different survey-taking websites to see what the real ROI was for consumers. We made less than $90.
Stay Away from Envelope Stuffing Schemes: My editor graciously allowed me to investigate the wild world of mail fraud.
What OKCupid Users in San Francisco Say About Love & Money: This is one of three writeups from a collaborative study between NerdWallet’s Integrated Marketing team and OKCupid that drilled into the tension between dating and personal finance.
Lindy hop
2012–present
When I’m not at my day job, I spend time practicing and teaching the Lindy hop and its associated vernacular jazz dances. My classes focus on creating comfortable technique, engendering a love of swing music and history, and inspiring students to come back for more. I have been dancing since 2012, began teaching my college club six months later, and have taught semi-professionally since 2016.
I’ve taught at local venues including Oakland’s The Breakaway, San Francisco’s The 9:20 Special and Cat’s Corner, and Palo Alto’s Wednesday Night Hop, and have taught special workshops for my alma mater club, UC Berkeley’s Lindy on Sproul, and taught at a special workshop for up-and-coming teachers put on by Minneapolis’s Uptown Swing. My dance partner and I also travel several times a year (when possible) to contest weekends, to challenge ourselves and stay fresh—I even placed in one!
Trancos, Inc
2015 – 2016
Directly out of college, I spent 8 months writing 8 articles per day, anywhere from 250-500 words apiece, for Trancos, Inc’s content properties like MommyPage (when they had a blog component). I don’t know where any of them live, and they were not bylined, but boy, did that job teach me to write fast!
I am not often inspired to write for myself, but occasionally I do! One of my posts, an ad hoc response to an NPR review of Frank Ocean’s Blonde that I wrote from deep in the closet, was an Editor’s Pick on Medium (back when that was something done by humans), and still gets 10-odd reads per month four years later, and my personal essay upon announcing that I was seeking top surgery is something I’m pretty proud of.
My first published work was a short story called “Comfort Food” in The Daily Californian’s culture mag The Weekender—little did they know it was also my first ever short story.