Most of design isn't designing. It's translation, between what people do, what the business needs, and what's actually worth building.
Over more than a decade in design, I've learned that the hardest part isn't the screen. It's getting a room full of people, each fluent in their own language, to agree on the same problem before anyone commits to a solution. That's the work I reach for first, and the work I'm best at.
Most of that has been in regulated, high-stakes products, across startups, agencies, and consultancies. Those environments taught me that clarity isn't a nice-to-have. When the stakes are real, the cost of a misunderstanding shows up fast, so I spend my energy early: asking why we're building this, listening for what people actually do versus what they say, and surfacing the hard tradeoffs while there's still time to act on them.
The translating doesn't stop at the work. A lot of my job is helping a team find a shared language and the confidence to use it: aligning designers, engineers, and stakeholders, shaping the direction we commit to, and bringing along the designers around me as the work gets harder. The best outcomes I've been part of were the ones the whole team understood and owned, not just me.
My curiosity from a very young age took me to Norway, where I graduated from Red Cross Nordic United World College, before moving to Sarasota, FL, to earn my BFA in Graphic & Interactive Communication from Ringling College of Art and Design. Now I'm living and working in my home country, Costa Rica.
When I'm not working on a project, you'll usually find me traveling, cooking, or training at Biophilic, always with good coffee and a half-finished book nearby. I'm a creative creature at heart, so I'm forever exploring that side, doodling at di.buja or behind a camera, capturing the small moments I don't want to forget: family, friends, and my dog Timón. Scotty, my first, watches over the rest.
Photo by the great Rick St. Louis
