Passionate about the intersection of design thinking and technology and how they can impact the quality of people’s lives.
As a creative and innovative thinker, I believe that well-designed products can transform how people navigate complex problems and address systemic issues. Providing nimble, iterative, and fast service delivery comes from inclusive team collaboration.
Having grown up in a civil war-torn country, I migrated to San Francisco California in my early teens, where I developed my interest in cultural diversity and identity politics. My bicultural experience has afforded me a unique perspective when it comes to empathizing with users, which I have applied to my design practice. My focus as a designer is to design products that assist historically excluded populations by applying UX principles to better understand their needs to best solve their user problems.
Working with passion and purpose
I feel fortunate to have merged my passion for design with my deep interest in social justice. This was a process of seeking prospects and showing up in many spaces before the right door opened in Civic Tech. In 2016, I joined the United States Digital Service. An initiative by President Barak Obama to bring Tech Industry’s expertise to transform critical, public-facing services.
In my current position at tEQuitable, I work with a team of mission-driven and brilliant individuals on tools that address systemic inequities in the workplace. Through applying design thinking, I advocate for users' needs and lead all design efforts to help our users reach the actionable next steps that can improve their work environment.
My past work
In my earlier design trajectory, I specialized in building large design systems iteratively. Shipping end-to-end experiences for over a decade in a wide variety of consumer-facing products for new brands as well as fortune 500 companies. I helped deploy projects in various fields, including SAAS, fashion, education, human resources, and environmental conservation. Less successful projects have always played an important role in the pilot process of iterating. In particular, I enjoy dealing with the ambiguity of identifying and defining a problem, gathering relevant data, and testing out possible solutions.
I explore cultural expressions and human narratives and how technology can make them more inclusive and meaningful.
I have a degree in Graphic Design from California Polytechnic State University and a Master's Degree from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. I focused on interactive tools for presenting human narratives regarding displacement and migration. I have been featured in Mic among the top 1,000 tech and science speakers who aren't men.
In my free time, I enjoy exploring diverse urban creative spaces. Museums are my favorite places to visit, and I enjoy dancing, watching documentaries, and reading about cultural expressions. On Sundays, you can find me taking long walks around Oakland with my dog Laika.
Education
Business Perspectives for Creative Professionals, AIGA/Yale
Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), MPS, NYU.
Fine Art, and Graphic Design, BA, Cal Poly.
Interests
Design, Universal Design, Public Art, Cultural Dance Forms, Social Justice, Human Rights, Refugee/Asylum-seekers and Migrant Rights, Museums Installations, Independent Films, Coastal Road Trips, Traveling.