Charles Hodgkins

I'm a writer. I'm an editor.

Hi there. My name's Charles Hodgkins. I'm pretty good at parallel parking, and once I made 95 of 100 free throws. But more on those heroics another time. We're here to discuss work.

I've spent the last couple decades strategizing, crafting, and shaping copy and content on a broad array of topics: health, travel/places, food, music, and software, to name more than a few. My creative versatility fills needs well.

But don't just take my word for it — see what others have said about my work.

I'm a regular Swiss Army writer and editor.

These days, I'm the product content manager for document software company PandaDoc. I work closely with our Product Design, Product Management, and Product Marketing teams to ensure our tens of thousands of customers not only get their documents signed electronically, but come to love our product along the way. My UX (user experience) and marketing copy helps smooth the ride through our application, sensibly and succinctly.

Before joining PandaDoc in early 2020, I kept busy in a handful of roles.

I spent the second half of the 2010s with thriving health content publisher Healthline, writing all sorts of marketing and UX copy in addition to curating, writing, and producing as many as 60 medical condition newsletters each month for two million subscribers.

And in the first half of the decade, I mixed and matched a number of fulfilling editorial gigs while spending more than three months a year traveling.

I enjoyed a long-running role as Deputy Managing Editor at iVillage, where I managed a remote staff of 20 contractors, maintained an editorial calendar, edited everything pitched my way, and generally helped keep the publishing engine humming.

I also wrote Pocket Rough Guide: San Francisco (a first-edition title), worked on nine other books for iconic travel publisher Rough Guides, and had several of my feature articles published on Roughguides.com.

Finally, amid all this wordplay and globetrotting, I whipped up reams of fun content marketing copy for music licensing and creative agency Brandracket.

I've always been efficient with my time.

I'm a patron saint.

During my nearly 20 years in San Francisco, I had an era when I would eat burritos often. Like, really often. Then, I would write reviews of these burritos — quite detailed reviews. But the real punchline? Readers would eat these reviews up.

Burritoeater.com, which I founded, authored, researched, produced, and ultimately retired after 11 years and precisely 1000 reviews, allowed me to wax rhapsodic about San Francisco's favorite homegrown econo-food: the Mission-style burrito. I appeared on the Cooking Channel, I was labeled a "local folk hero," I had the "patron saint of San Francisco taquerias" tag famously slapped on me by DailyCandy, I covered the local taqueria scene like a salsa-splattered blanket.

See a slew of additional press shout-outs here, including my punditry in The New York Times and a full-page piece in San Francisco Chronicle Magazine.

I also clean blinds.

Early evidence of my knack for injecting a major dose of vitality into the ordinary appeared as early as my junior year of high school. My Least Favorite Pastime: Cleaning Venetian Blinds garnered critical raves from my Honors English III teacher, Bob Morrish, and nudged me down the dusty writing trail for good.

Thanks for stopping by and reading.