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 throughline has remained consistent: understand the system, center the people navigating it, and make the experience clearer, more humane, and more effective.

U.S. Department of State

Experience Strategist · Fearless Digital · 2024–2026

Preventing International Parental Child Abduction

Researched how parents and caregivers navigate prevention information during high-stakes situations, using feedback from participants around the world to help make government guidance clearer, more usable, and more responsive to what families actually need. View project →

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

Product & Service Strategist · 2022–2024

Innovator Sandbox

Designed and tested a service model for helping emerging technologies move from early ideas through research, validation, prototyping, and transition—bringing together military, academic, technical, and commercial partners around a clearer path from innovation to implementation.

Rocket Central

Senior Experience Designer · 2021–2022

First-Time Homebuyer Experience

Researched and redesigned the end-to-end homeownership journey across Rocket Central, Rocket Mortgage, and Rocket Homes, with a focus on first-time, minority, and lower-income buyers. Helped teams identify where disconnected products, education, and handoffs were creating friction and shape a more integrated customer experience.

Informed Vote

Freelance Civic UX / Service Design · 2021

Civic Information Experience

Helped Leadership Austin and Austin Tech Alliance shape the information architecture and user experience for a nonpartisan voting resource, making election information easier to find, understand, and use. Developed site structure, user flows, wireframes, and experience concepts that helped people move from questions to clear, actionable information. View project →

Google Legal UX

Service Design Consultant · 2020–2021

Law Enforcement Request System (LERS)

Researched and mapped the end-to-end experience of Google’s secure law-enforcement request service across users, legal processes, internal teams, and supporting systems. Combined qualitative research, workflow analysis, journey mapping, and service blueprinting to identify fragmentation and inform clearer request submission, status visibility, coordination, and internal handoffs within significant privacy, security, legal, and policy constraints.

City of Austin — Office of Design & Delivery

Lead Service Designer / UX Researcher · 2017–2020

Resident-Facing Service Transformation

Led human-centered research and service redesign across complex City services spanning public health, homelessness, police oversight, permitting, community programs, and civic access. Worked with residents, frontline staff, department leaders, technologists, and policy stakeholders to uncover how services actually operated and translate research into journey maps, service blueprints, prototypes, future-state workflows, and operational recommendations. View project →

Macmillan Learning

UX Research / Service Design · 2017

Research Operations & Learning Science

Helped establish a combined user-centered design and learning-science research environment for educational products. Built research processes, participant-recruitment practices, usability studies, interviews, surveys, ethnographic research, and lab operations that made it easier for product, design, and learning-science teams to observe research and use evidence throughout product development. View project →

SlideUX — Simons Foundation

UX Research / Service Design · 2017

Enterprise Systems Consolidation

Supported discovery and UX research for the consolidation and redesign of the Simons Foundation’s Grants Management, Ordering, and Internal Administration systems. Used stakeholder interviews, onsite focus groups, heuristic reviews, journey mapping, user-story analysis, and workshops to identify workflow friction and help shape a more integrated, user-centered enterprise experience.

Education Service Center Region 13

UX Research & Design · 2016

Education Service Design

Supported research and experience design for digital services used by educators and administrators. Translated complex program requirements and user needs into clearer workflows, information structures, interaction concepts, and prototypes within institutional environments where the interface was only one part of a larger service system. View project →

OUTYOUTH

Freelance UX Research & Service Design · 2016

LGBTQ+ Youth & Community Experience

Conducted community-centered research with LGBTQ+ young people, staff, supporters, and donors to understand needs around privacy, safety, connection, crisis support, resources, and access. Translated findings into audience models, journey maps, content and experience concepts, and wireframes for a more secure and supportive digital experience. View project →

Behavioral Health & Human Services

Prior Experience · 2002–2015

Foundation in Direct Service & Public Systems

Spent more than a decade working across mental health, homelessness, substance use, therapeutic courts, child welfare, and public behavioral-health systems in roles spanning clinical therapy, outreach, case management, crisis intervention, behavioral support, and cross-agency coordination.

The work also built an early foundation in research, evidence-based practice, systems thinking, and service improvement. At DESC’s 1811 Eastlake Housing First program, I worked alongside University of Washington researchers evaluating outcomes for formerly homeless adults with chronic alcohol-use disorders.

Those experiences continue to shape how I approach design today—particularly my attention to trust, power, trauma, motivation, policy, handoffs, and what happens when people must navigate complex systems while already under stress.View project →

The early case studies linked here document that transition—from working inside complex services to researching, mapping, prototyping, and redesigning the systems themselves. Case Study →

Speaking & Facilitation