I am an experienced humanity-centered design leader, researcher, educator, author and artist. I teach design courses at Wheaton College and in the graduate digital media program at Northeastern University. My research includes how people perceive and interpret messages, symbols and visual characteristics, methods for effective, inclusive design education in higher education and designing for privacy, transparency and use in data collection.
I have extensive experience leading research and design for web-based products and services, organizational websites, identities and print communications. From 2016-2022 I was the design lead in the product development group at the Harvard University Institute for Quantitative Social Science, designing tools to help researchers share data ethically and improve access to high-performance computing. I represented user perspectives in multiple university research computing initiatives, and served as a chair of the University’s Experience Design community.
Before working at Harvard, I co-founded and led the Boston user experience firm Nimble Partners. Nimble provided human-centered design services ranging from product definition through launch for clients including Oracle, Juniper, Kayak.com, Napster, Umbra Ltd., Women Deliver, Burning Glass Technologies (now Emsi BurningGlass), CafePress.com, numerous startups and over fourteen offices and departments at MIT, including the VP for Finance, MIT Medical, The Office of Housing, and the Office of Minority Development. Before founding Nimble I defined service offerings and led professional service designers at web personalization software pioneer ATG (Art Technology Group), acquired by Oracle. While at ATG I served as the first Experience Design chair on a local AIGA board and led programming for experience design events for the Boston community.
Early in my career I worked at WGBH Design in Boston with AIGA medalist Christopher Pullman and at Shepard/Quraeshi Associates with AIGA medalist Samina Quraeshi.
I have a MDes (terminal degree) in human-centered communication design from the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology, and studied designing tools for learning under professor Sharon Poggenpohl. I have a BFA in graphic design from Boston University. I was honored to study in Brissago, Switzerland with renowned designers Armin Hofmann, Paul Rand and Richard Sapper through the Yale Summer Program in Graphic Design.
Recent work and study includes learning the painting techniques of Charles Hawthorne through the Cape School of Art in Provincetown, MA and museum leadership and exhibition interpretation through Harvard Extension School.