Relevant experience

Every year, my mom and I plant a Three Sisters garden. So in my current role spearheading design for three heavily interconnected workspaces in a MedTech quality management system— Training, Documents, and Change Control— I took inspiration from our beloved corn, beans, and squash. Nothing exists in isolation, and each workflow and design element is carefully implemented to best support the others.

For me, systems thinking goes far beyond design systems. It means not just considering, but prioritizing interconnectivity at every level: from the smallest feature change to downstream effects on physicians and the patients they serve.

There are no separate systems. I bring a holistic approach and intersectional lens in the hopes of driving far-reaching change within complex systems, while avoiding unintended consequences.

Read more about how I drove a system-level redesign in my full case study here↗.

As I have historically worked on smaller product teams, I’ve often taken on the role of both designer and user research. I bring a balanced approach of both quantitative and qualitative methods to my design practice.

With experience both in the hard sciences (I spent a year during my undergraduate studies working in a molecular biology lab) and with ethnographic research, I hold a versatile skill set in identifying problems and testing hypotheses.

For a more detailed example of my research approach in the context of a real-life design problem, feel free to check out my Quizzing case study— my team alleviated manual processes by automating employee evaluation programs.

I feel strongly that the tools we design are both a product of and a reflection on our social systems. It’s my goal to transform processes into tools for social good (particularly in health care and climate) through thoughtful design.

My academic background is in journalism, in which I hold a degree from Northwestern University. Some of the topics I’ve covered include:

• Sustainability: I researched and wrote an article covering sustainable methods in UX and software engineering.

• Indigenous history: I researched, shot, and edited a story about Carlos Montezuma, the first Indigenous student to attend Northwestern, featured in the Knight Lab’s Indigenous Tour of Northwestern.

Outside of work, I volunteer at my local nature center, coordinating fundraisers and organizing talks about local environmental systems.