About me — What my resume won’t tell you

Born on a cold day in December, my personality would come to show my calmness, empathy, straight-forwardness, and a love for dark, somber colors. My parents would shape me into an organized, thorough, independent and hard-working human being.

When I was a child, I remember my dad sitting down with me to draw. He would draw a random, squiggly line on the paper then hand it to me and ask what I saw. I would do the same for his paper and we would both make a creation from the lines. His lines would usually turn into a dragon or a motorcycle on the highway. Mine were usually more scribbles. Anyhow, he taught me to see art in anything and how to create art from nothing. I’ve carried this lesson through life and my love for art and design has only grown from there.

Being born & raised in Southern California, the Los Angeles city lights themselves were art inspiration to me. So out of high school trying to chose a college, I knew I desperately wanted to be in the art field in some way. Also, I need to mention this was the year of instagram (2010) and I was bombarded with beautiful photographers and art from around the world. Seeing how “simple” everything looked on instagram, I decided to go to The Art Institute to major in photography.

During my last year in college, I realized everyone with a phone was now a “photographer” and it was incredibly hard to get into the field to make any money. However, my favorite classes were design studies, color theory and painting. Looking back now, I should’ve realized sooner I was attracted to the design in a photograph and not the act of taking a photograph.

Being trapped in the California recession, I found myself job to job. My plan was to work for a company for a few years and work my way up the corporate ladder. Each time I was close a year or two in, I was laid off. There was a breaking point I reached knowing this wasn’t working. I needed a real career.

I started making goals and assignments for myself at home to increase my skills in the software I knew. I watched Youtube tutorials to increase my skills in Photoshop, I taught myself how to create logos in Illutrator. I bought drawing books and practiced drawing 3-dimensions. I devoted my Instagram to curating my favorite artists and designs. Giving myself assignments was new, but studying design was nothing new to me.

I’ve always loved design in products, packaging, furniture, apps, fashion, logos, sculpture, etc. It was during this time of self-discovery that my boyfriend, a web developer, mentioned UX design to me. He said when he heard of it, it was all things I was already doing. So I looked into it and was almost upset I did not hear about this sooner!!

I researched UX design bootcamps. Found a great one in Lehi, Utah called Dev Mountain. Packed my things in my Jeep and drove 10 hours to Utah. I began class that week in March 2019 and instantly felt a sense of belonging and excitement knowing I wanted THIS to be my career.

My time in class only reinforced my love of design, research, asking why, creating a user experience and being a master of wireframing in Sketch. So here I am on the next chapter, I like to say, in my life going forward as a UX Designer.

Thank you for reading this far!