Design, it depends.

For many years of my early career I had been told I would eventually be required to pick one thing in design to focus on. I'm proud to have resisted this, continuing to study all aspects of user experience design, including design research, accessibility, visual design, front end development, and even sales, support, and QA. My past experiences and work products have all benefited from this insistent inquisitiveness.

The innovative opportunities I've enjoyed are a direct result of my resistence to wittle down my skillset. I've believed I needed to understand fundamentals across a product experience, from the challenges an end user faces to the realities of business operations. Without them, it'd have been easy to believe in a solution without seeing it's true impact.

Roles

Founder & CEO, Make&Model

As the Founder and CEO of Make&Model, I hired and spearheaded our team in our work executing on innovative projects across various domains, notably achieving an Emmy award for one of our clients and leading many through critical growth phases. I'm a leader who cares deeply about personal creative development, growth, and in fostering innovation and collaboration across teams. I founded this services firm to focus on mission-driven work, and pairing that with my background in product lead us to have many opportunities to work on critical and innovative challenges bringing positive change to both society and the environment.

Director of Design

After working with the founders of Flywheel Sports - a former top competitive spin cycling studio with locations around the world - to redefine critical technical and service design aspects of their customer experience, I'd find myself working with the same team on their new venture. My first mark was to run a sequence of design sprints that would become the first phase of their product, and I'd later join the team full time as their Director of Design. During my time there I directly contributed on product design, user research, usability testing, and paved the way forward for this new team to bring the product to an international market.

Partner & Creative Director

In 2013, only a year later after starting Dobot, I sold it to DockYard and onboarded as Partner and Creative Director. I would eventually co-lead a team of nine designers and twelve engineers. We completed multi-million dollar projects for clients like McGraw Hill Education, NASDAQ, Society of Grownups/Mass Mutual, IDEO, Flywheel Sports, and America's Test Kitchen. After overseeing the team expansion and training my successor, I resigned to embark on a journey to explore the concept of a impact driven design studio, which eventually materialized as Make&Model.

Founder

My second business was a Cambridge, MA-based boutique design and illustration studio. I led the creation of interactive animated web comics, organized pillar Boston design community events, and art-directed animations, photoshoots, and even music videos. While we focused largely on full interactive media experiences, we also performed product design services ranging from innovative in-store shopping to software for new wifi-first cellular devices.

Education

Writing & Speaking

Events

  • Founder & organizer of UX Camp

    2014–2018 (New York, California, Maine)

    I started UX Camp during my employment at DockYard, and carried it forward with me through Make&Model. It is a wonderful event, and would be a pleasure to bring back wherever I'm at next.

    Fundraising, sourcing speakers and workshop coordinator, creating event schedules and fallbacks, sourcing musical artists, venue, catering and marketing for ticket sales

    Leading the events programming, working with volunteers and collaborators to keep smoother operations

    ⟶ 🥁 UX Camp.

  • Co-founder & organizer of Offline Camp

    2015-2019 (Oregon, New York, Berlin)

    Offline Camp was an event that assisted in the popularization of the need to address low-to-no bandwidth situations within software and web applications. Primary functions: Website, Fundraising, “Camp Counselor”, Firemaster, Werewolves Director, Writer

    ⟶ 🦖 Offline Camp.
  • Past organizer of meetups: UX Boston, UX East, UX Berkeley, UX San Francisco, UX Happy Hour: Boston & DC