About
Behind the Screens
How I Got Here
I've been designing professionally for over fifteen years, starting in brand and visual design before spending nearly a decade going deeper into digital experience, UX strategy, and systems architecture.
Along the way I've worked across industries that have very little in common on the surface: financial services, commercial construction, healthcare, energy utilities, commercial furniture, food service. Each one forced me to learn a new business model fast, understand how different audiences make decisions, and figure out where design could create the most leverage. That pattern of absorbing complexity and turning it into clarity is what eventually pulled me toward systems thinking and product design.
At Highland Group, I built and led a digital experience team, hiring key roles across UX, development, and content strategy, and directed work for enterprise clients including Steelcase, Consumers Energy, Amway, and Gordon Food Service. I introduced platform-based delivery, established component and UX standards across client engagements, and currently lead research and strategy work that is shifting client relationships from execution toward longer-term partnerships.
The deeper I go, the more I find myself drawn to the architecture underneath the visible design: token systems, component APIs, state modeling, the boundary where design decisions meet engineering constraints. I started building in code to better understand that boundary, working in React, Next.js, and TypeScript alongside design tools. This site is built on Next.js and Payload CMS with a design token workflow that syncs Figma decisions to production code.
I approach design the way a ski racer approaches a technical course. You have to look two or three moves ahead to keep your line clean. Solving only for the immediate turn pulls you out of position. That instinct to hold both the current problem and the downstream implications at the same time is what I bring to every project, whether it's a component system, an enrollment flow, or a product strategy roadmap.
Right now I'm focused on finding a product team where systems thinking, technical fluency, and cross-domain experience have room to compound.