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

That mindset never left.

When I made the pivot to digital, I wasn't chasing a trend. UX and architecture are the same problem from different angles: build the thing around the person who has to live in it. I formalized the switch 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 are. Not in Figma. In the gaps between teams. I've built design systems engineers can ship from, pushed for alignment in rooms where nobody agreed, and shaped how a B2B SaaS product explains itself, from the first sales call to the last support ticket.

Good design, to me, is organizational as much as it is visual. Function and usability come first, and the client's goals come before my preferences. The rest is 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.