I design trustworthy systems for some of life's most important decisions. I also design products that millions of people love.

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest surrounded by nature, heavily involved in the arts and chasing adventure wherever I could. Immediately after high school, I was living my dreams as a singer-songwriter and guitarist. My job was entertaining at luxury resorts in Colorado ski towns and on evening cruises around New York City. I spent years in hospitality, from espresso and crepes to hip sushi kitchens, from small-town bakeries to big-city fine dining. Then, starting in 2015, I became a licensed real estate agent in the then red-hot Seattle area, selling over a hundred homes. So when I say I've studied people, I don't mean through books and documentaries. I mean thousands of face-to-face, spontaneous, beautiful interactions. Reading a room from a stage, from behind a bar, or across a desk during the biggest purchase of someone's life turns out to be excellent training for design. I just didn't know to call it research yet.

This unconventional path led me to Zillow, where it gave me an amazing angle to launch from. I started on agent tools (designing for a job I had actually done), then moved to our highest-impact surface, Search, where I designed the company's first LLM product. Now I design for the new save-and-return engagement team, leading strategy in ambiguous and cutting-edge spaces. The through-line is high stakes at high scale: people making a once-or-twice-in-a-lifetime decision. They don't want magic; they want inspiration and intelligence. They want honesty, clarity, and clear signals that cut through the noise. They want to collaborate, and they want to make their dreams a reality. Every trust pattern I've fought for (keeping advertising off an information surface, labeling AI-made artifacts, designing failure states before happy paths) comes from those convictions.

How I work

I run at ambiguity with genuine enthusiasm (problem definition, first research, fast prototypes) and bring collaborators in once there's something real to react to. I think in object models and systems before screens, because those are what large teams can actually agree on. I'm an expert workshop facilitator with a knack for getting the right people in the room, and I get fired up about creating vision work.

I have a bias toward action and love to ship, learn, and iterate, while holding the quality bar for released work high. I believe teams are stronger when they feel valued and connected, and I use whatever skills I can to lift up the people around me. I use AI as a force multiplier, and I'm transparent about it. I'm optimistic and a little lighthearted by default. But I hold the line where it counts.