Every piece starts with observation. Before the first stroke, before any mark is made, there is looking: at light, shadow, texture, the way emotion lives in the pressure of a brushstroke. Growing up sketching and painting, I learned to sit with details that others move past, to hold them, to let them mean something.

That same eye carried me into tech. At a cybersecurity startup, I found myself reading a different kind of composition: the tension between business and design, the miscommunication that left gaps in the picture. I kept looking for a way to fill them. Then I found research, and something settled. Research was the medium I had been searching for, one that rewards close observation, translates what users feel into something teams can act on, and turns scattered signals into a coherent picture. 

What once felt like separate sketches began to resolve into the same piece. Art taught me to see. Fast-paced tech taught me to work with urgency and ambiguity. Research gave both a purpose. They shaped me into a detail-oriented, empathetic, visual thinker who can map structure quickly and catch the unguarded human moments that make interviews worth having.

I am now pursuing my MS in Human Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington to go deeper, focusing on accessibility, healthcare, and experimentation. Each experience has been a dot, and I'm genuinely excited to see the shape they're still making!