I'm a graphic designer and prepress specialist, recently turned UX Designer. I specialize in clean, attractive design with a focus on creating smooth experiences for users.

My journey as a graphic designer began immediately out of college. I landed in the marketing department on campus for dining services, designing full dining locations, providing supporting marketing materials and collateral to sell meal plans. After seven years in the marketing world, I landed a prepress job, specializing in grand format printing and dimensional signs. Both of those jobs were fast-paced environments and challenged me in different ways. I was lucky to have lots of creative freedom on projects, and I truly loved tapping into the analytical side of prepress like building scaled templates or solving problems in color matching. However, after 9 years, I was becoming mildly burnt out. My career to this point had zero interactions with web or apps. I was craving a new challenge!

Taking a leap, I enrolled in a 6 month UX/UI Bootcamp through Northwestern University. I can confidently say it was the best decision, ever. I found it aligned with my earlier design philosophies. For all designs or planning for print projects, I aim to communicate information as clearly as possible. Early on in my career, designing paper menus or menu boards were my favorite. I view it as a puzzle—how can I organize lots of information in a clear, attractive way. The same applies to UX/UI, making decisions based on research, utilizing heuristics, concentrating on readability, and information architecture to ultimately make processes the easiest it can be for the user.

During my career shift, I decided to quit my full-time job, to focus solely on becoming a UX Designer. I landed a part-time job at a coffee shop, which was perfect. Not only because I love coffee, but people energize me! Not only did I like interacting with the customers, I performed user tests for my case studies with my coworkers and patrons.

I love being a part of a team at work and in my personal life. I’ve been on many sports teams growing up and I’ve been playing or involved with rugby since college. Individuals with various backgrounds are able to bring something unique to the table. Peers naturally challenge you, bringing out the best in everybody!