ABOUT

I grew up in Colorado — student body president, varsity athlete, the kind of kid who wanted to be involved in everything. Studied humanities at CU Boulder because I was more interested in how people think than how machines work. Turns out you need both.

After a stint in advertising at Venables Bell & Partners (Intel, Audi, Reebok), I landed at Google. Seven years across Shopping and Workspace teams — contractor to design lead, 5 UI patents, features shipped to billions of people. It was the best design education money can't buy.

Then I left to build things from scratch. Co-founded SZNS, an NFT platform backed by Framework Ventures and Dragonfly Capital. Co-founded Icebreaker, a professional network backed by CoinFund, Anagram, and Accomplice — raised $5M, grew to 50K+ users, led product through four pivots from NFC proof-of-meeting to B2B recruiting. Started angel investing along the way (Modular, among others).

Now I'm deep in the AI era. I build with Claude Code and Cursor daily, ship my own designs in TypeScript and React, and I'm fascinated by what happens when design thinking meets generative systems. This portfolio was built that way.

I start with people. Not users, not personas — actual people with real frustrations. The best products I've shipped all began the same way: sitting with someone and understanding what they're actually trying to do, not what they say they want.

I believe in moving fast and showing work early. Wireframes rot. Polished comps lie. I'd rather build a working prototype in a day than debate layouts for a week. Ship it, watch what happens, iterate.

And I believe designers who can code have an unfair advantage. Not because engineers are replaceable — they're not — but because the gap between idea and implementation is where most design intent gets lost. I close that gap.