After studying studio art at Wesleyan University, I found my true love: design.
My first real job after graduating was as a digital designer at Cooper Hewitt. That means I had the incredible luck to learn design by doing it in the best possible environment: the nation’s museum of design.
My teachers were, quite literally, some of the world’s top designers. My museum-world-famous manager Seb Chan reported to the even more famous Bill Moggridge, forefather of interaction design and design thinking.
Under their guidance, I spent five years creating exhibitions, books and archival Smithsonian interviews in close collaboration with the likes of Massimo Vignelli, Paula Scher, Michael Bierut, Ellen Lupton, Rick Scofidio, Debbie Millman and many more. By helping these designers tell their stories to the public, I learned the fundamentals. The seeds of my own emerging taste were sown. Most important, the fire was lit: I wanted to be a designer.
Fast-forward through a master’s degree in design, several jobs spanning research and workshop facilitation, and a few awards and international exhibitions of my illustration and infographics. I learned that I’m uniquely skilled at explaining complicated things. I love to absorb tons of information and crystallize it so other people can say, “Aha.”
Today, I’m a product designer tying it all together in the context of new technologies and the products people use at work. I believe that when tools are well designed, we enable people to get things done and feel good. AI assistance is making it increasingly possible for one designer to work across the full spectrum of design from judgment to craft, and I’m energized by that.