I started in architecture before I started in software. My design education was Colorado State, my real education was 8 years at Hoerr Schaudt and Wolff Landscape Architecture in Chicago, where I learned that good design isn't about aesthetics first. It's about understanding how people actually move through, use, and feel in a space.

That mindset never left.

When I made the pivot to digital, I wasn't chasing a trend. I recognized that UX and architecture are solving the same problem from different angles. Both are about designing systems that serve people who didn't ask to be served by a system. I formalized the transition through a UX/UI apprenticeship at Thinkful, then brought everything I had into product.

For the last five years at Cohesion, I've been the kind of designer who doesn't stay in their lane. I work across product, marketing, sales, customer success, and engineering because that's where the real design problems live. Not in Figma. In the gaps between teams. I've built design systems that give engineers confidence, driven alignment in rooms where nobody agreed, and shaped how a B2B SaaS product communicates itself from the first sales touchpoint to the last support ticket.

Good design, to me, is organizational as much as it is visual. It's knowing which conversation to start, who needs to be in it, and what to put in front of people so they can actually make a decision.