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Drawing > Design> UX
A bit about me
When I was a kid, I liked to draw, and my dad put me in a community art class. It was 6 middle aged women and 12 year old me, and it was wonderful. One week the teacher mentioned that you could actually make money as an artist doing graphic design. I thought that sounded boring.
But in high school, my friends all wanted posters and t-shirts for their ska bands that were poised for global fame. Suddenly design was cool. And it turned out to be fun.
Later, after a premature attempt at teaching high school history, I picked up some design classes at the local community college. There one of my teachers recommended me for an internship.
There I got to cut out the backgrounds of Pokemon images, work on an actual page on a Nintendo website, and do some print work for Microsoft. The generous designers mentoring me encouraged me to drop out of school and start picking up odd jobs from them, which I was glad to do.
Having a little bit of Microsoft and Nintendo in my portfolio right out of the gate was a lucky break. I was able to find increasingly significant work, build a strong resume.
Over time I grew out of work that was primarily supposed to be cool to work that was primarily supposed to accomplish a lot of complex tasks. Helping data scientists navigate Microsoft and Google's Cloud environments, and lately, getting a fintech startup off the ground.
Seattle Art Institute
Trinity Lutheran College
Teaching and Mentorship
As chair of the Visual Communication department at Trinity Lutheran College, and a part-time instructor at Seattle Art Institute, I taught courses in UI design, color theory, typography, HTML, and CSS, mentoring the next generation of designers.
TalentNet
Senior UX Designer
At TalentNet, I partnered with another designer to lead the UX for an enterprise SaaS platform with two core products: one for recruiters and one for talent. Our work spanned the entire user experience, from onboarding to advanced search, filtering, and reporting.
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Designed and conducted user testing, created a unified design system, and led extensive competitor research.
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Presented design solutions to project and engineering teams, collaborated with clients to gather insights, and partnered with engineering throughout development to ensure top-quality UX/UI execution.
Google Cloud Platform
UX Designer
During my 15-month contract onsite at Google, I tackled complex UX challenges for Google Cloud Platform (GCP), designing intuitive, AI-driven recommendations for GCP’s 5 million users.
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Developed UI architecture, interaction flow, and visual design for GCP’s web application to support seamless user experiences.
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Presented designs to UX, project, and engineering teams and collaborated closely with engineering to ensure every detail met UX/UI specifications.
