I'm an experienced, inquisitive, and adaptable product designer. I'm incredibly passionate about mentoring and coaching designers, especially from underrepresented communities. My journey began when I decided to drop out of school at 16 to pursue my dream of becoming a 3D artist and creating animated movies for Pixar. However, I soon realized it wasn't my calling and started teaching myself web design. In 2008, I joined Sourcebits, a design agency, where I grew from being the first web designer to becoming the creative director. I led a team of 12 designers from different parts of the world, and together, we designed over 100 apps, some of which were handpicked by Apple and Google. During my tenure at Sourcebits, I created products for companies like Intel, General Electric, SAP, Coca-Cola, P&G, MIT Sloan, IBM, and the US Army. Later, I worked as the head of design at two startups: FreshMenu, a food-tech startup that transformed how people order food online, and ReferralCandy, a B2B platform that helped merchants with customer retention. I enjoyed empowering entrepreneurs, and this led me to Shopify, where I launched several initiatives to improve multichannel selling for merchants and spearheaded different experiences on Shopify Collabs—a platform that connects merchants with creators. I specialize in product strategy, visual, and interaction design, and I have extensive experience in design thinking, content strategy, design systems, and more.