I grew up surrounded by creativity in the most literal sense. My mom had a painting studio at home; my dad ran an architecture practice out of a converted barn. After school I'd run blueprints for him, and on weekends I'd lose track of time watching her work. By senior year of high school, I'd basically moved into the art room — ink, pencil, clay, paint, metals, whatever I could get my hands on.
That instinct led me to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, then west to the Bay Area in the mid-'90s. After a three year foundation on the agency side, I spent more than a decade as Design Director for Barclays Global Investors and iShares ETFs — working alongside shops like Landor, Eleven Inc., Venables Bell & Partners, and Jim Erickson Productions, and learning what it actually means to build and steward a global brand. iShares grew into the world's leading ETF family during those years. That experience shaped everything that came after.
Since then I've led creative at Citrix, helped build the brand for a video streaming startup called Ooyala, and spent the better part of a decade as Senior Director of Brand and Creative at Barracuda Networks — where I built an internal agency that became the company's most trusted creative resource. The categories have changed — enterprise software, streaming video, cybersecurity — but the work has always been about the same thing: making complex, technical ideas feel human.
The best part of this journey has been the people — those who believed in me early and opened doors, and the talented folks I've been lucky enough to bring along the way.
