My Story

​My path into UI/UX didn't start with a portfolio or a bootcamp. It started with a decade of building the interfaces that designers imagined, close enough to the seams to understand why some ideas flourish and others quietly fall apart in implementation. That proximity changed how I see design, not as a handoff but as a conversation, one I've been participating in longer than my title ever reflected. 

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At World Book, I crossed the line for the first time: I wasn't just implementing someone else's vision but designing the complete UI for a children's educational product from the ground up. Every choice, how much to show at once, how to guide a 5-year-old through a flow without confusion was mine to consider and justify. At EAB, I stepped further in. I became the team's go-to voice on accessibility and usability, partnered with stakeholders to translate fuzzy requirements into tangible design options, and owned our component library as both a technical and a design artifact.

 

Along the way I've learned that the most valuable thing a designer with an engineering background can offer isn't just feasibility checks, it's the ability to reframe constraints as creative decisions. When a designer on my team once proposed a frosted glass modal that would have taken weeks to build in our framework, I didn't say no. I sat down with them, understood what they were after visually and experientially, and we found an alternative that delivered the same feeling in a fraction of the time. That kind of collaboration, where technical reality makes the design stronger rather than smaller, is what I want to bring to every project.