I believe good design should bring more joy to the world, never leaving anyone behind.

Growing up in a working-class home in Western Pennsylvania, I learned from a young age the value of making the most of what we had. When I wanted something, I often had to scrap together parts from around the house to make it myself. Those days of gluing old buckets together to make a new street hockey trophy or inventing new games with notebooks and Coca-Cola piggy banks were my first introduction to design. Enjoying those times with my siblings and friends was what made me want to use these skills to bring more joy to the world.

After college, I spent eight years living in South Korea and the Czech Republic, giving me a new cross-cultural perspective on how design intersects with human and environmental needs. Navigating places, systems, and interactions in a new language and in new contexts helped me become more adaptable and empathetic, especially under pressure, skills that I believe have made me into a truly human-centered designer.

These days, I work as a Senior UX Researcher and Strategist at Motivf, a human-centered design consultancy in the United States. Although our work is applicable in any problem space, I particularly thrive in public transit, environmental management, civic technology, government services, and interactive maps or GIS-based products. I leverage human-centered design methods such as ethnographic research, co-design workshops, rapid prototyping, and usability testing to deeply understand a problem and ensure that solutions are addressing it correctly.

My biggest passions outside of work are traveling, supporting Manchester City Football Club, and playing hockey. I have visited over 30 countries, including annual pilgrimages to Manchester, and I hope to travel to every continent soon. I play ball hockey, inline hockey, and ice hockey weekly, a sport that has taught me much of what I know about life and gave me the strongest friendships I know. To give back to the sport, my brother and I own a small hockey accessories company with the mission of making the game more affordable and accessible to everyone.