About
Effective design, developed from a diverse perspective.
I'm AuDHD — late-diagnosed, like a lot of us. For most of my life I just knew I experienced things differently. Studying psychoacoustics at the University of Miami gave me the framework: perception isn't uniform. Two people in the same room hear different things. That idea never left me.
I spent years struggling with software that assumed everyone thought the same way — forms that punished a different cognitive style, interfaces that made you feel like the problem. I got into UX to build the other kind: products where the full range of people who use them feel like they were actually considered.
That frustration came from somewhere specific: I'd spent years on the other side of it. Before UX, I designed A/V and control systems for commercial spaces and performance venues, drawn in AutoCAD, and every project started with the client rather than the equipment — who would be on that stage, who would run the system, who would walk in on a Monday and need the room to simply work. The control panels staff used every day were my first user interfaces: the point where all that wiring met a person. A system nobody can operate is a failed system, however well it's wired.
Then I spent five years responsible for everything in a venue that had to open every day: kitchen, HVAC, plumbing, and a floor of arcade games and animatronics. Unrelated systems, all interdependent, none of them mine to operate. My job was keeping them working and teaching the people who ran them.
Software came after that — eight years of contract development, half of it before I moved into UX and half alongside it. Back-end work for a GIS firm in SQL, VB and ASP.NET taught me to read a system from the data up, and to see how one wrong assumption about how people work travels all the way to the screen. I still write client-side code with our dev team today, which keeps my designs honest about what it takes to build them.
Which brought me full circle. A venue and a software product ask the same question: who has to make this work, and what do they need in the moment they do? Eight and a half years in UX — five in design engineering for productivity SaaS, three and a half in ed-tech — from first research session to shipped product. I specialize in behavioral design, gamification, and systems thinking — bringing structure to ambiguous problems and measurable outcomes to the work.
Let's figure out the best solutions together.
Experience
Resume
Proficiencies
- Practice
- Inclusive Design
- UX Research
- Behavioral Design & Gamification
- Design Systems
- Accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA)
- Systems Thinking
- Craft
- Interaction Design
- IA & Navigation
- Wireframing & Prototyping
- Responsive Design
- Mobile-first Design
- Tools
- Figma
- FigJam
- Hotjar
- Maze
- React (read/write)
- Git
- Methods
- Jobs-to-be-Done
- OOUX
- Lean UX
- Opportunity Solution Tree
- AI-Augmented
- Claude
- Codex
- Figma MCP
- Lottie MCP
- Dovetail
May 2023 – Present
Senior Product Designer
Pragmatic Works
Collaborating in a product trio, designing end-to-end solutions that optimize a B2B / B2C ed-tech platform that targets corporate and vocational school markets.
- Unlocked new compliance-gated B2B markets by championing accessibility to leadership and leading the product team to Section 508 / WCAG 2.1 AA compliance — enabling a record-breaking B2B sale and the company's highest-ever monthly revenue, up 105% year-over-year.
- Took ambiguous onboarding friction from undiagnosed to solved — diagnosing root causes through usage data and UX audit, then redesigning key touchpoints — driving a 200%+ increase in monthly activation rate; partnered with a PM and 4 engineers, aligning copy strategy with sales.
- Saved 6+ months of development cost by validating stakeholder interventions through UXR; findings presented async then live to the CEO, president, and all department heads at the quarterly strategy meeting.
- Owned CertXP 0-to-1 — from ambiguous concept to shipped gamified cert-prep tool — leading a PM, 3 engineers, and an offshore illustrator/Lottie animator; drove a 62% increase in conversions.
- Drove 25% increase in development efficiency with a tokenized, color-variable design system used by the full product org (3 engineers, 1 PM).
- Drove 32% increase in monthly subscription retention through a 2-email re-engagement campaign targeting users inactive 7+ days, supported by in-app value nudges.
- Collapsed the design-to-dev handoff by shipping front-end code myself via an AI-augmented workflow (Codex, Figma MCP, Lottie MCP), saving weeks of engineering labor across ongoing product updates.
- Write client-side code with the company’s dev team alongside the design work — responsibilities have shifted toward design engineering as the team and tooling evolved.
- Run monthly design watchparties with the dev team — live session recordings of users in the product — to build shared empathy and surface friction without formal research cycles.
January 2022 – May 2023
UX Designer II
Beeline
Collaborating in a growing design team, supporting multiple product squads, and delivering UX for enterprise / SaaS platforms in the staffing / workforce industries.
- Addressed navigation and information scent barriers in HMX, the hiring manager experience, driving measurable gains in user adoption.
- Reduced UI bugs by 40% through cross-functional design ops improvements with engineering.
- Increased team efficiency 20%+ by championing iterative Lean UX practices in an agile environment.
April 2018 – January 2022
UX Engineer / Designer
Beeline
Collaborating in a small design trio, supporting internal needs, and delivering UX for enterprise / SaaS platforms in the staffing / workforce industries.
- Helped the org acquire its first WCAG AA VPAT, partnering with engineering leads, QA, and legal/compliance — directly supporting sales.
- Built and maintained the org's first 2 design systems (Figma, Sketch, and code), consumed by 10 teams and 8 PMs across the org.
- Established the org's first UXR repository — personas, empathy maps, and journey maps.
- Participated in portfolio reviews and design interviews for junior and senior candidates; mentored interns on design thinking and career development.
March 2014 – April 2018
Backend Contractor (Full-time)
GIS Firm
Full-time backend contract role, prior to starting my UX career.
- SQL & Visual Basic in an ASP.NET framework.
- Performed data mapping, acquisition, and report building for GIS web application development.
- Maintained RDLC and XML sheets.
- Managed tickets in Jira, Confluence, GitHub, and Azure DevOps.
April 2018 – March 2022
Freelance Developer (Occasional Projects)
Independent
Occasional freelance projects for GIS and workforce clients, concurrent with full-time UX roles at Beeline — stepped away in 2022 to focus fully on UX.
- Built headless API integrations for cloud-based tools, enhancing product delivery by 150% through build tool automation.
- Developed full-stack codebases in PHP, Vue.js, and Nuxt.js, including headless WordPress applications for clients requiring flexible CMS solutions.
- WordPress theme development for various industry types.
- Versioned codebases via Gitflow, Git, and GitBash.
2006 – 2014
Earlier: A/V Systems Integration & Facility Operations
Various firms; CEC Entertainment
A/V systems design and integration for commercial and pro-performance venues, drawn in AutoCAD (2006–2009); then electro-mechanical systems engineering across whole-venue operations at CEC Entertainment (2009–2014) — kitchen, HVAC, plumbing, and the arcade and animatronics floor — plus leading and training junior staff.
Education
B.A.
Music Engineering, Minor in Electrical Engineering
University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
Psychoacoustics and circuit design shaped an early instinct for human perception and systems thinking — the same foundations that later formalized into UX practice through HCI study and the A/V and facility systems work that preceded it.