My Journey so far
High School AND a University drop out!
*I still received a GED and B.A.
I thrive on exploring unconventional solutions and questioning the ‘why’ behind every action. This approach not only fuels my curiosity but also brings unique, valuable perspectives to my work.
I have learned that sustainable happiness and joy comes from hard, deliberate, work and empathy. I’ve also learned that we tend to over-estimate what we can accomplish in months and underestimate what we can do over years.
Pictures of Dogs
Family Life & Balance
San Francisco and Southern California
Dogs, Cat, Partners, loving life.
I feel like life is about having shared experiences with loved ones.
I spend a decent amount of time listening to Sci-Fi audio books, keeping pace with continual learning, helping friends with their professional goals, and weightlifting.
2025-present
Aurochs
San Francisco, CA
Founded a creative agency built on cognitive psychology
I founded Aurochs to bring together everything I have learned about design, psychology, and technology. The agency specializes in Perception-First Design™ — a methodology I developed that applies processing fluency, cognitive load theory, and decision architecture to create interfaces that convert.
I am also building Cognograph, a spatial AI workflow orchestration canvas. Four provisional patents pending.
2020-2025
Simply Smart Home
Remote
Contract work that turned into a full time role
I have been able to learn and experiment in a production setting at warp speed within Simply Smart Home. This lean startup is a dynamic and diverse group of talented professionals.
2020-present
QTBIPOC Design
Remote & Annual meets
Found some awesome peers online, and helped them start and grow a nonprofit UX bootcamp and design collective
We empower LGBTQ+ designers of color with free and accessible digital design education, mentorship, and networking opportunities.
The staff and members of QTBIPOC Design are wonderful and deeply driven folks. We’ve created a space where one didn’t exist before, and graduated three classes from our scholarship based UX bootcamp. I helped build their site, lead branding, and instruct designers on WordPress content management and development.
Find out more at QTBIPOC.design
2015-2019
Contracting & Freelancing
Remote, Chicago IL, and Southern CA
Contract work gave me the freedom to continually learn design, and explore the art of communication through improv
Things got weird, in a fun way. I took the full training course at iO improv, joined a troop and performed weekly, had fun trying to do well with stand up comedy, did some visuals for a late night talk show, got tricked into being the photographer for a friend’s sister’s weeding, and had a role in a student film.
Improv helped me learn active listening, and a bunch of other soft-skills that make my personal and professional life leagues easier than before to navigate. Desired outcomes from interactions requires empathy, deliberateness, and mindfulness.
2010-2015
Tantum Technologies
Remote
Figure out things as you go along, for a Shark Tank Shark
A friend I made online as a teenager, we learned our trades by modifying games together, co-founded this web-hosting and design company with me in 2010 after being approached by a Shark to do all their high-traffic websites for Shark Tank.
We experimented with whatever worked process wise, and failed more often than we succeeded, but we did well enough to launch nearly two dozen sites designed to handle over 200,000k unique viewers within 10 minutes of airing on TV.
Contact Me
Let’s start a conversation about making things pretty
Have an opportunity you have in mind something you think I’d be interested in? Any questions you think I may be able to help answer?