About Me

I’m a service designer, UX researcher, and experience strategist with a background that spans behavioral health, nonprofits, city government, federal agencies, education, housing, and technology. I’ve worked with organizations including the City of Austin, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Air Force, Google, Macmillan Learning, and Rocket Central—often on complex services where people are navigating uncertainty, high stakes, or experiences that were never designed around how they actually live.

My approach combines human-centered research, systems thinking, service design, and a foundation in psychology and direct human services. I look beyond the interface to understand the policies, workflows, handoffs, incentives, and relationships shaping an experience—then help teams turn that complexity into services that are clearer, more useful, more equitable, and easier to navigate.

How I Got Here…

I came to design through an unconventional path. I grew up in the Chicago area and later moved to Seattle, where I earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and began my career working in mental health, homelessness, child welfare, and other human-service settings.

That work taught me to pay attention not only to what people say they need, but to everything surrounding them—the policies, relationships, incentives, handoffs, histories, and power structures that shape what is actually possible.

Eventually, I realized I was asking design questions before I knew to call them design questions. I moved into UX research and service design, carrying that behavioral and systems perspective with me.

Today, I’m most interested in complex services: places where technology intersects with policy, operations, human behavior, and real life. I’m particularly drawn to public and civic systems, education, housing, health, and emerging technology—especially work where research can help organizations see a problem differently before rushing to build a solution.

Outside of client work, I make art, write, and explore ideas about community, public systems, and how design might contribute to the conditions people need to thrive.

Experience

My work has moved across public service, technology, education, housing, and human services, but the through-line has remained consistent: understand the system, center the people navigating it, and make the experience clearer, more humane, and more effective.

EXPLORE THE WORK
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U.S. Department of State

Strategist · Fearless Digital · 2024–2026

Preventing International Parental Child Abduction

Researched how parents and caregivers navigate prevention information during high-stakes situations, helping the State Department rethink guidance around what families actually need to understand and do. The work translated global user feedback into clearer, more usable prevention experiences. View project →

WANDR — Air Force Research Laboratory / U.S. Air Force / U.S. Space Force

Product & Service Strategist · 2022–2024

Innovator Sandbox / STEM

Designed and tested a service model for moving emerging technologies from early ideas through validation, prototyping, and transition. The work helped military, academic, technical, and commercial partners see where innovation was getting stuck—and create a clearer path toward implementation. View project →

Rocket Central

Senior Experience Designer · 2021–2022

First-Time Homebuyer Experience

Reframed the homebuying journey for first-time, minority, and lower-income buyers across Rocket Mortgage, Rocket Homes, and related services. The work exposed gaps between products, education, readiness, and handoffs and helped teams shape a more connected path to homeownership.View project →

Informed Vote

Freelance Civic UX / Service Design · 2021

Civic Information Experience

Helped Leadership Austin and Austin Tech Alliance turn complex election information into a clearer nonpartisan voting experience. The resulting structure helped people move more easily from basic questions to understandable, actionable information. View project →

Google Legal UX

Service Design Consultant · 2020–2021

Law Enforcement Request System (LERS)

Mapped the people, processes, policies, and systems behind Google’s secure law-enforcement request service to reveal where complexity and fragmentation were affecting the experience. The work helped clarify request submission, status visibility, coordination, and internal handoffs within significant privacy, security, and legal constraints.View project →

City of Austin — Office of Design & Delivery

Lead Service Designer / UX Researcher · 2017–2020

Resident-Facing Service Transformation

Led research and service redesign across City services ranging from public health and homelessness to police oversight and permitting. The work helped departments see how services operated from the resident and frontline perspective—and turn those insights into clearer workflows, experiences, and operational changes.View project →

Macmillan Learning

UX Research / Service Design · 2017

Research Operations & Learning Science

Helped build the research environment and practices that connected user-centered design with learning science across educational products. The work made research more observable, repeatable, and useful to product and design teams throughout development. View project →

SlideUX — Simons Foundation

UX Research / Service Design · 2017

Enterprise Systems Consolidation

Helped uncover how fragmented grants, ordering, and administrative systems were affecting staff workflows across the organization. Research and service mapping informed a more integrated enterprise experience designed around how people actually worked. View project →

Education Service Center Region 13

UX Research & Design · 2016

Education Service Design

Researched and redesigned digital experiences used by educators and administrators navigating complex program requirements. The work translated institutional complexity into clearer workflows, information structures, and tools that better supported the people using them. View project →

OUTYOUTH

Freelance UX Research & Service Design · 2016

LGBTQ+ Youth & Community Experience

Researched the needs of young people, staff, supporters, and donors across experiences involving safety, privacy, connection, crisis support, and access to resources. The findings helped shape a more secure, supportive digital experience grounded in the realities of the community it served. View project →

Direct Behavioral Health & Human Services

Prior Experience · 2002–2015

Foundation in Direct Service & Public Systems

Spent more than a decade working inside mental health, homelessness, child welfare, substance-use, therapeutic-court, and behavioral-health systems. That frontline experience became the foundation of my design practice—shaping how I think about trust, power, policy, trauma, motivation, handoffs, and the realities of navigating services under stress.View project →

Education, Training & Early Case Studies.

Public Systems / Clinical Psychology / Human Centered Exper/ Service Design

These early projects document my transition from working inside complex human-service systems to researching, mapping, prototyping, and redesigning them. They show the beginnings of the systems-oriented design practice that continues to shape my work today. Case Study →

Speaking & Facilitation