I grew up in Indiana, mostly doing simple things—helping fix stuff in the garage, figuring out how things fit together, and spending a lot of time outside. My family appreciated art, but it was never really talked about as a “real” career. So for me, drawing, sketching, and writing poetry were just personal hobbies, something I did quietly on the side. What I took more seriously was my curiosity about how things worked—building with LEGO, maintaining tools, messing with mechanics, and trying to understand the logic behind it all. That’s what pushed me to pursue engineering.

It wasn’t until college that I realized something was missing for me. I enjoyed solving technical problems, but I kept noticing how frustrating it was when something “worked” but felt confusing or cold to the person using it. That’s when I started drifting toward things like web design, animation, and eventually human factors and UX. Design clicked for me as a way to bring both sides together: the part of me that loves systems and structure, and the part that cares deeply about people having a kinder, clearer experience.