My Story

Here's how it is...

1993-2011:

Born and raised in North Carolina, I have now been saddled with a lifelong appreciation for barbecue*, sweet tea, and bluegrass music.

* Barbecue here, always, and only refers to a type of food and not an event.  The best kind being of the porky, vinegary mush variety (Texas brisket has earned my respect and my taste buds, but not my life-long love.  We’re just not there yet.)

2011-2015:

I went to Virginia Tech and studied Industrial Design at the School of Architecture.  Besides the occasional late-night in studio, I spent the rest of my free time with the ballroom dance club, entrepreneurship club, and hiking up local mountainsides.

Fun college moment:

Going on an interfaith volunteer trip in the Dominican Republic to help out rural villages...followed immediately by a trip to Las Vegas for a conference.

Nothing puts the world into perspective quite like helping someone with access to fresh water one day, only to be greeted by the Bellagio fountain the next.  

Ain't that just the way.

2015-2016:

The ever-present smell of a cigarette-stained ceiling paired nicely with my microwave bean burrito as I put the finishing touches on our Kickstarter campaign.  My friend Morgan and I were about to embark on an anxiety-inducing labor of love.  At the end of it all, I'm happy to say we soared past our funding goal, only lost some money, and only delivered a little late (by Kickstarter standards anyway).

2016-2021:

First, I got hired as a designer, then I got promoted to a lead designer, and then I got put in charge of the whole dang team.  

Sticking to my mantra of learning as much as possible as fast as possible, I grew with the team to deliver our best work.

Present

Currently, I'm a Senior Creative Strategist at Big Human. Here, I help big companies make big decisions about branding, product design, marketing, and more.

Thought Leadership & Management

My Progress so far

While leading the design team at Venveo, I spent most of my waking hours (and sometimes non-waking hours) trying to understand what it takes to make a good creative team great.  Below are some developments from that journey.

Tackling Ambiguity — 5 Things To Do When You Don't Know What To Do

Ambiguity has a funny way of sneaking into projects unnoticed (along with its comrades: chaos and confusion). Here are 5 things I've found that help set the record straight.

7 Methods For Clear Creative Communication

In the last post, I focused on how to dispel ambiguity by taking outward action, but what if we turned our eyes inward? After all, communication is a two-way street, and creative endeavors aren't always known for their straightforward nature...

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