// mission
To translate emerging technologies into tools of meaning — shaping stories and systems that extend human will and reveal new possibilities.
I help teams unlock clarity and momentum by shaping the stories, tools, and systems that connect human will with technological possibility. Technology is most powerful when it becomes an extension of purpose — and well-designed experiences can surface not only what a product does, but what it means.
Over the past decade, I've helped early- and growth-stage companies articulate their vision and translate it into product strategy, user experience, and brand clarity. I bring a cross-disciplinary background — from galleries and editorial work to complex industrial systems — and a philosophy shaped equally by practice and imagination. I've seen firsthand how moments of alignment, storytelling, and design can unlock traction, investment, and team focus.
01
// professional overview
A nonlinear path, by design.
My path to design leadership has been nonlinear by design. I began in gallery spaces and editorial studios, learning how to frame work, curate attention, and build emotional narratives in physical space. That instinct carried into my work at OCTO Product Development, where over nearly a decade I've moved from UX execution to directing multi-million-dollar strategy engagements across energy, healthcare, and autonomous systems.
I've collaborated with engineers, founders, artists, and executives — people who think in very different ways — and helped them align around shared futures. I've led field research in rocket and semiconductor factories, facilitated product strategy workshops with C-suite teams, and shaped the digital platforms that followed. Across those engagements, I've come to specialize in moments of ambiguity: where vision isn't yet visible, where the product hasn't formed, or where internal and external narratives are out of sync.
The products I've worked on have helped secure over $100 million in funding and formed the basis for real-world change in utility infrastructure, autonomous mobility, and more. But what I value most are the inflection points — the conversations, the reframing, the moment when something disjointed becomes legible and inevitable.
02
// representative projects
Selected engagements.
// future mobility & interfaces
A
Designing the Interface for a Flying Boat
Partnered with a startup developing an electric seaglider — a marine vessel that flies using Wing-In-Ground Effect. Led the design of the cockpit's screen-based interface, merging marine and aviation control systems. Designed for marine captains rather than pilots, the interface had to be intuitive yet flight-capable. Collaborated closely with test pilots and aviation advisors to integrate commercial and military-style flight elements in a hybrid HMI built for test flights and future commercial use.
B
Mission Control for Autonomy
Worked with Havoc, a startup creating collaborative autonomous vessels. Led a three-month sprint to design a real-time command interface for autonomous teaming, alongside a brand strategy that distinguished them from legacy defense players. Their demo, featuring the control system I helped define, secured DoD engagement and a $7M seed. The work continued through a live Navy and DIU demonstration and the raises that followed — $15M, then $85M.
// market readiness & strategic storytelling
C
Rewiring the Grid
Directed UX and product development for Utilidata's grid-edge AI platform — inference running inside the meter, interpreting power waveforms in real time. Led user research with utility engineers and C-suite workshops to shape a compelling MVP and investment narrative. The result: a platform that helped the company raise over $60M and secure a strategic partnership with NVIDIA.
D
From Interface to Identity
Oversaw an immersive digital project for an industrial client that combined product storytelling, interactive design, and augmented reality. Designed for corporate experience centers and trade shows, the piece repositioned the company as a forward-thinking innovator and became a sales tool for complex technologies.
// industrial systems & embedded insight
E
Embedded Insight
Redesigned the embedded UI for coordinate measurement machines, replacing a legacy PC-based system. Conducted on-site research at aerospace, semiconductor, and optics facilities to capture nuanced workflows. The resulting on-device UX streamlined high-complexity tasks and laid the groundwork for hardware evolution.
03
// the agentic transition
Leading a practice through the shift.
The current inflection point in design is not a tooling upgrade. It is a change in what the artifact is. When a competent agent can produce the screen, the screen stops being the deliverable and the behavior becomes the deliverable — and most of the craft that design organizations were built around sits on the wrong side of that line.
I have been working this from both ends. Inside OCTO I set the team-wide standards: where agent assistance belongs in research synthesis and prototyping, where it does not, and what a designer is accountable for when the first draft is generated rather than drawn. Alongside that I keep a personal sandbox that runs well ahead of the team — MCP-connected knowledge systems, agent-authored working prototypes, published experiments — because I do not believe you can set a standard for a practice you have not built inside yourself.
The management question underneath it is the one I find most serious: junior design work is exactly the work that automates first, and the apprenticeship ladder in this field was made of that work. Protecting a path into the profession is now a design leadership problem, not an HR one.
The teams that come through this well will be the ones whose leaders can still say what good looks like when the machine is fast, fluent, and wrong.
04
// creative & strategic influences
Where the practice comes from.
My design approach is shaped as much by speculative fiction and curatorial practice as by product roadmaps and UX frameworks.
I'm deeply influenced by science fiction — not just its aesthetics, but its function as a design discipline for the future. Thinkers like Arthur C. Clarke and Donna Haraway inspire my belief that technology is not just a tool but a narrative: a means of expressing values, extending human will, and negotiating what's possible. I often draw on cyborg theory, using it as a metaphor and method for user experience — seeing interfaces as points of symbiosis between human intention and technological apparatus.
My early background in galleries and museums sharpened my skills in framing, storytelling, and teaching visual language to broad audiences. Those same abilities now help me lead stakeholder workshops, craft investor-facing narratives, and shape interfaces that feel both intuitive and meaningful.
Strategy is a creative act — and good design at any level, from systems to pixels, is about making the future legible.