About This Designer
I enjoy designing brands and digital product from scratch. I enjoy making music and videos with my handsome husband. I stay busy with (perhaps) too many creative projects, two (darling) children, and (nearly) zero complaints.
In July 2020, in the midst of the pandemic and all its woes, I got an opportunity to make a difference that was worth changing my life for. I joined the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to help their education team build a new product from scratch. Together with a growing team, I’m designing a social-emotional learning tool for students to connect with their teachers—Along. As we roll out to more and more schools, I hope that relationships fostered through Along will make a positive impact on the generation hardest hit by the pandemic, socially and emotionally.
In 2016, I left my one-job-a-week life to divide my working time in three ways: facilitate design sprints and reviews with Google's Design Relations team, create the podcast Advice from Mom with my own psychologist-mother, and make music and videos with my band, Love Jerks. In 2019, after 40 podcast episodes, I concluded the podcast to focus more time on a new creative project—becoming a mom.
Throughout all my projects, I've loved actualizing big ideas with design. I was the first employee and designer for the education platform, MasterClass. Launched in May 2015, masterclass.com is the premiere online destination for learning from the world's greatest talents. In addition to taking great pride in the brand and product I helped the founders establish, I really enjoyed helping them develop their first three online classes on set with James Patterson, Serena Williams, and Dustin Hoffman. I helped the company grow to 30 people and launch six classes before setting off on my own.
Prior to joining MasterClass, I worked for several start-ups, including the how-to app, Snapguide, as both a product manager and designer. Before catching the start-up bug, I spent three inspiring years as part of the YouTube user experience team. A highlight of my career was leading design on YouTube's first major visual refresh project.
I started my design career as a design consultant at Cooper and Mule Design, designing interfaces for everything from medical devices, to online political publications, to the infographics for the interaction design handbook, About Face 3.
I also spent five years as the art director of The Disposable Film Festival, an international festival celebrating cinema made possible by low-cost technology.
I've really enjoyed speaking about design over the past few years. Giving design talks has taken me to South Africa, The Netherlands, Canada, and across the United States.
On the harmonious front, music has been a constant companion to my design work. My musical husband and I pulled off a very ambitious matrimony in 2015—we wrote and performed an all-original rock-opera wedding. I started in the Bay Area music scene in 2007 as part of the indie-pop band, My First Earthquake. I then spent three years as the war-painted frontwoman in the rock band, Happy Fangs. You can hear my complete discography and see all my music videos on this very site!
In closing, a bit of biography: I'm the daughter of a Scrabble-loving psychologist and a bird-photographing engineer. I'm a Pennsylvania girl at heart—born in Philadelphia and grown in the South Hills of Pittsburgh (gooooo Stillers!). At the ripe age of five, my parents supported my decision to become a vegetarian! Still am one! I graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in communication design with a minor in creative writing.