I spent nineteen years as a competitive swimmer, most of it as a Division I athlete. It's a strange sport: you spend hours perfecting something nobody else can see, just to shave off half a second. I think that's where I first learned to care about the small, invisible details that make something work.

In college, I studied psychology. I was drawn to the question of why people do what they do, not in an abstract way, but practically. Why does someone give up on a form halfway through? Why does one interface feel obvious and another feel like a chore? I didn't have a name for it yet, but I was already thinking like a designer.

I found my way into UX almost by accident, and it clicked immediately. It let me combine the two things I actually cared about: understanding people, and building things that work. Since then, I've designed everything from a security platform used by analysts under pressure, to a health platform built for new mothers looking for information they can trust. Different users, different stakes, same job every time: take something complicated and make it feel simple.

Today I lead product design at the Connecting Mothers Initiative, where I get to do the part of this job I love most: mentoring other designers and helping shape a product that makes something genuinely hard feel a little easier.