Principal Designer with almost ten years of cross-disciplinary practice — from hand-lettered chalkboards and store murals to enterprise design systems. I solve complex problems with the same care I bring to a layered cocktail or a slow-rising loaf: ingredients chosen carefully, structure considered, finish polished.
Before pixels, there was tempera. I spent eleven years at Trader Joe's as an illustrator, muralist, and chalkboard artist — drawing produce on storefronts, sketching out signs, and learning that good design always begins with a strong concept and a steady hand. Retail taught me audience, restraint, and how to make something land in three seconds flat.
When I joined UC San Diego, I traded chalk for cursors and brought that same craft sensibility into digital design. The medium changed; the obsession with detail didn't.
Curiosity is the only tool I refuse to put down.
As a Principal Designer, my work lives at the intersection of strategy, systems, and craft. I'm drawn to gnarly, ambiguous problems — the kind that require equal parts research, intuition, and a willingness to throw out the first three ideas.
Staying current isn't optional, it's the job. I make a deliberate practice of learning new tools, methods, and emerging patterns — because the field moves, and a designer who stops moving with it stops being useful. AI-assisted workflows, motion, prototyping in code: if it's shaping how people build, I want to know how it works.
I travel to learn. Different cities, different kitchens, different ways of seeing — every trip becomes raw material. I'm happiest immersed in a culture I don't yet understand, eating something I can't yet pronounce.
At home, I'm usually elbow-deep in something I'm making from scratch: bread, paintings, ceramics, a stupidly elaborate craft cocktail. The medium shifts. The compulsion to build does not.