The first time I uploaded an HTML file — a file of plain text — to a server and loaded it in a browser (IE 5), I was hooked. Anyone, anywhere in the world, could see what I had built. I had found the medium I would build my career on — the World Wide Web.

Ever since that moment, I’ve defined my career by straddling the line between design and code. I got my start building websites in high school, back when there was no distinction between “design” and “development,” and CSS wasn’t a “thing” yet. I indulged these twin interests by studying graphic communication and computer science at Cal Poly.

After college I went down the programming path by joining Cityspan as a Data Warehouse Developer. I built data models, database queries, reports, and UIs to access data. From that experience I discovered I could spend weeks tuning a SQL query to run faster, and customers would barely notice, or I could make a small tweak to the UI and get heaps of praise from customers. Which path would you pursue?

To further my design education, I studied user-centered design at UC Berkeley’s School of Information. While there I learned about research methods, prototyping, testing, sociology, law & policy, behavioral economics, and more.

I also took a class applying the learnings from behavioral economics to websites via A/B testing, which led me to join Optimizely after graduating. While there I continued moving between code and design, eventually becoming the Head of Design, leading a team of Product Designers, UX Researchers, and UI Engineers. In that role I integrated research and design with the engineering team's Agile delivery process, which helped teams focus on solving the biggest customer problems, and doubled the throughput of the design team. I also led the design systems team, which further brought design and engineering together while improved the quality of our UI.

After 5 and half years I was ready for a change, so I switched out of management and back to being a Product Designer at Casetext, where I helped build modern, easy-to-use legal tech tools.

That experience showed me I had a lot of strong opinions about how to build and run teams, so I went to Gladly to lead their product design team. The challenge there was to take the team from good to great. I did that by running the design systems team, making operational improvements (like defining our discovery process and career levels), and creating a personality for the product, which gave us a framework for adding more moments of delight.

After that I led the product design team at LaunchDarkly. The challenge there was growing and scaling the team. I went from a team of 3 to 12 in under a year and a half. I moved the team up the maturity ladder by hiring great people, forming a design system team, overhauling our visual design to match our new brand, and defining processes to improve the team's work, such as our discovery process and team critiques.

Scaling and maturing the team was a lot of work, and I felt the itch to return to my craft again. So I moved back to being an IC product designer in 2022 to work on LaunchDarkly's third product initiative. This was an exciting opportunity to build a product from the ground up, and to work on a small nimble team that would operate as a startup-within-a-startup. And that's what I've been working on ever since.

Outside of work I like to hang out with my daughter 👶, Poppy, walk our dog 🐕‍🦺, Emma, and of course drink wine 🍷 with my wife and have long meals together where we close down the restaurant and are the only people left. I also play tennis 🎾, music 🎶 (guitar 🎸, bass, and drums 🥁, but I’m pretty rusty now), hand letter ✍️, write 🖋️, and cook 🥘.