About

I work out what the thing should be, then I build it.

Fifteen years designing products, brands, processes, and the arguments that sell them — usually in industries I had to learn from scratch first, and usually without much hand-holding.

The pattern

Three times I have joined an industry I knew nothing about, learned it well enough to see what was broken, and designed the thing that fixed it.

• 2012 – 2019 · Food safety & supply chain

  Primus Group / Azzule Systems

  Arrived as a marketing coordinator with no background in produce, audits, or compliance. Left having designed the product and interface for their supply chain compliance software, authored its use cases, and contributed design work to technology the company patented. It went to market with Walmart, Target, Publix, Aldi, Taylor Farms, Dole, and Wendy's.

• 2019 – 2022 · Healthcare master data

  Gaine Technology

  Built the marketing function from nothing for a master data management platform — an abstract product solving a problem most buyers could not yet name. Packaged and launched four product lines, rebranded the flagship, and grew clientele and revenue 13% with the pandemic starting months into the job. Opened a biotech pipeline by working out exactly when a biotech becomes ready to buy.

• 2023 – 2026 · Construction management

  Edwards Construction Group & Todos Build

  Hired to fix proposals, having never written one or worked in construction. Within a bid season I was running the process alone: 24 proposals, 18 won, $269M in contracts. Then became founding designer of the company's software venture, taking 19 applications from problem discovery to developer-ready specification and into daily use by more than 400 people.

How I work

I start by talking to the people living inside the problem — not a persona, the actual estimator who has been fighting the same spreadsheet for eleven years. I audit what they use now and find the specific places it fails them. Only then do I draw anything.

What I hand over is unambiguous: every screen, every click interaction, the use cases behind them, and the reasoning a developer needs to build it without guessing. Then I stay in the loop while it gets built, because the first version is never right and the person who designed it should be the one adjusting it.

The other half of the job is making the case. I write and design the pitch, the proposal, the deck, and the brand around the work, because a good solution nobody buys is a hobby.

She is exceptional to say the least… I believe she has made a significant impact on the path Azzule has taken over the past few years.

Robert F. Stovicek, Chairman, Primus Group

Outside the job

I am a fine artist — paintings, life drawings, portraits. I have served twice as a non-profit board president, and I have spent years organizing community events on California's Central Coast, including a first-ever Small Business Saturday that brought hundreds of families into a town of a few thousand.

That work is not separate from the rest. Most of what I know about getting people to show up for something they have never heard of, I learned there.