My Story

Since childhood, I've been drawn to manipulating the world around me in the artistic and creative sense. My earliest childhood memory is sitting in my families living room designing a floor plan for my Barbie's house using only a crayon and paper. Throughout elementary and middle school, I had a passion for designing floor plans and layouts for imaginary houses with two goals - efficiency and practicality.

Come high school, I chose to take various elective courses in architecture and AutoCAD with a dream of studying architecture and environmental planning in college. While in college, after one year of architecture courses, I came to realize that I could not visualize myself working within this field because the actualization was vastly different than what I had fantasized growing up. Due to this realization, I decided to pursue a different career path.

After I left architecture, I had a big decision to make between my three areas of interest - graphic design, animation, and art education. To me, going into a field that utilized my artistic abilities and skills was a no-brainer. After some consideration of my skills and abilities, I chose to pursue art education so that I could pass on my love of the visual arts to a new generation while remaining creative myself.

After 5 years of studies with countless student teaching and substitute positions, I graduated with my Bachelors of Science in Art Education for grades K-12 and a minor study in Art History. This accomplishment led me to become an elementary art teacher in Las Vegas, NV, at a Title I engineering magnet school. My first years were full of learning, failing, and growth. COVID hit at the end of my first year, and the entirety of my second, which meant everyone was learning from home and utilizing new ways to use technology for teaching. Through this new mode of education, I became familiar with a plethora of user interfaces and experienced, as well as witnessed, the importance of a stellar user experience and the frustrations of a bad one. It was difficult trying to teach kindergarteners how to navigate a website aimed towards educating them, but does not have the user experience to accommodate them.

After the unprecedented school years of navigating many websites and educational applications, I began my own research, while using my first-hand observations, to draw up quick redesigns of the regularly used sites, so that they would better suit my students' needs. This 'new normal' made me realize that it felt natural for me to work with technology. While I love teaching and working with children, but the institution controlled my freedom of creativity. I have always been fascinated and drawn to technology because of how it is something we all share in common. The year of working remotely displayed my particular talent when working with it. So in the Summer, after my second year of teaching, I felt a calling to transition to the UX/UI field so that I could make a larger impact on the world than I could within the confines of the classroom. Through designing intuitive applications and websites I can create an enjoyable experience, not only for students, but everyone who uses technology around the world.

My ultimate goal now is to land a full time position creating user interfaces that create an enjoyable and seamless user experience while also being visually stimulating and aesthetic.

My mentor in my last semester of student teaching always said:

I am a teacher, at heart, that felt compelled to continue learning and advancing my skillset, even if it led me onto a different path than expected. I hope that one day I can utilize my UX/UI experience to help teach a new set of aspiring designers.