Growing up, my parents each taught me creative problem solving in their own unique ways. My mom was an energetic teacher (turned stay-at-home-parent... thanks, Mom!) with a knack for cool arts and crafts and a creative interior decorating style, and my dad was a software developer and entrepreneur with a bent toward efficiency and stewardship. For as long as I can remember, excellence has been an innate core value for me, and I've always found solving problems a way to have fun.
In middle school, I attended a summer camp (for nerds), where I took a class on Photoshop. For a few years, my new skills mostly enabled me to go all out on creative aspects of my school assignments. Sophomore year of high school, my church asked if I would use those skills to create digital and printed graphics. It didn't take long to realize graphic design was the right balance of creativity and problem solving for me. I started school at The Modern College of Design in Dayton, Ohio two years later. Throughout my time at The Modern, I continued serving my church as a graphic designer, worked several internships, tutored other students, and led a student ministry club on campus. In 2019, I graduated with my Associate Degree of Applied Business in Design as Co-Valedictorian, a Graphic Design USA Student to Watch, and with GDUSA awards for portfolio projects. In 2021, I graduated with my Bachelors in Design Leadership as co-valedictorian and more local student design awards.
I want to give a special thanks to my parents, who taught me skills and mindsets that made it possible for me to be an active player in my own life, a hard worker, and a creative problem solver; to my pastors, for allowing me to use my skills to do something significant, even at a young age; and to my mentors at The Modern, who refined and developed me and most of all, believed in me.
User experience requires a design eye like any other discipline, but nothing excites me about design like using it to solve a problem instead of just aesthetics, and that's user experience in a nutshell. Taking the time to deeply understand and internalize others' problems and develop solutions that solve them at their root is what I love to do. Digital interfaces are an important part of our everyday, so UI/UX is the best way for me to apply my knack for problem solving and transform real people's everyday lives through visual design.
I stubbornly pursue depth of understanding—a habit formed from the belief that excellence and hard work honor God. I seek to understand the "why" behind every problem, through user research, usability testing, and data analysis. Transforming data to usable insights enables me to design solutions that meet the real and felt needs of stakeholders and users. Defining the problem is one of my favorite parts of the design process!
For most of my life, I've been making contraptions to solve everyday problems. As a kid, this usually involved tape, yarn, and building blocks. Nowadays, it's software experiences. Collaboratively ideating realistic solutions across disciplines is how I make room for innovation.
Communicating with team members, leadership, stakeholders, and users about new features and projects is one of my favorite creative problem-solving endeavors along the way! I believe a new feature is only as powerful as the understanding of the users.
Flexible design abilities and commitment to excellence, deep understanding, servant leadership, and excellent communication are some of the things that set me apart.
Contact me below to talk more about my work experience.
