I spend my free time hiking, falling in love with new cities (like Charleston- my portfolio inspiration), studying nutrition, pushing myself into scary things (like surfing), and spending time with my husband and doggie.
I found myself caught between two worlds, but couldn’t see a way to combine them yet. In one world, I found myself in love with art and the ability to create something beautiful and inspiring. I took art class every year and the class hour seemed to pass faster each time. I took my art home to continue working and asked my instructor for more assignments. It didn’t matter what medium I used, the ability to create something from nothing was amazing.
In my second world, I found myself deeply consumed by math problems. Two, Three, Four page math problem? Sign me up. I loved untangling a problem, finding a solution, and learning from my inevitable mistakes along the way.
I’ve always had a desire to solve problems, the more difficult, the better. What I learned is that to ignite my passion (sometimes obsession), the problem had to relate to a specific topic: People. Enter my love, passion, and discovery of design.
Using my strengths in math and chemistry, I studied and became a chemical engineer. Although this path allowed me to solve many difficult problems, I was missing something. Two things, really. I was missing the capacity to create and to focus on other people.
Although chemical engineering wasn’t for me, It taught me discipline, extreme ownership, problem solving and even user interviewing and presentation skills. I’ve carried this forward and continue to appreciate these skills every day.
To change careers I thought back, way back, to childhood and who I really was as a person. I remembered being a relatively quiet child that other children reached out to and even spilled their guts to. I was always connecting well with others, somehow always feeling their emotions and understanding their actions.
That’s when I realized my career had to be connected to others. Yes I wanted to solve problems, but they had to be focused on people. My true passion isn’t necessarily art, math, or problem solving, it’s helping people. As a bonus I get to uncover that childhood artist.
Now I find myself excited each and every morning to begin my work. I love spending my time creating and improving for the benefit of users. The rest of my time is spent with users where I get the opportunity to build relationships, learn how their minds are mapped for the tasks they perform, and find opportunities for the applications and websites that they use.
One of my new found passions involves teaching UX Design to coworkers and watching their own passion spark when it comes to listening and building for users. Now they come to me with user focused questions about their projects and want me involved every step of the way!