I was the kid who took things apart just to figure out how they worked, much to my mom’s annoyance. Vacuum cleaners were a frequent victim.
Then I got my first soldering iron and started building things of my own, including trip alarms designed mostly to annoy my sister.
Eventually that curiosity found slightly more productive outlets: robotics, sculpture, filmmaking, and code.
The medium kept changing. The instinct didn’t: figure out how things work, then see what else I could make with them.
By college, I was already working as a PM at Panzura. When we brought in a design studio, I found a name for what I’d been doing all along.
I loved that you could define what a product should do, creatively bring those ideas to life, prototype them, and eventually see them ship as real software.
So I started doing both.
I worked as a PM / designer while studying Human Centered Design & Engineering, with a focus on HCI. Eventually, I realized design was where I wanted to spend most of my time.
I never really stopped thinking like a PM, though.
I eventually joined Panda, an AI startup, as its founding designer. “Designer” turned out to be a pretty loose description of the job.
I designed the product, prototyped ideas, thought like a PM, worked alongside the CEO, and helped steer the company through a pivot into Meetingflow, which was later acquired.
It taught me something about myself: I do my best work when the answer isn’t obvious yet.
I joined Meta and started working on WhatsApp’s business platform, then Marketing messages, and finally Business AI.
The scale changed. My way of working didn’t.
I still found myself bouncing between design, product strategy, writing requirements, prototyping, and storytelling. Sometimes I was designing the interface. Other times, I was helping the team figure out what the product should be in the first place.
I’ve never been particularly interested in where the designer’s job is supposed to end.
AI collapsed the distance between having an idea and actually making it.
Now I can wonder “wouldn’t it be cool if…” and have something working a few hours later. Sometimes it’s for work. Sometimes it’s to learn. Sometimes I build things just because I can.
That feeling became contagious. I started helping other designers build too, and have since taught 80+ people how to go beyond prototypes and ship production code.
The tools changed. The curiosity didn’t.