About

My veterinary colleagues and I had just finished the last day of our sample collection at a ger camp in Hustai National Park, Mongolia, home to the famous Przewalski horse. The end of the day involved a field test of the CellScope. The sun had just set over one edge of the valley and a fierce wind began picking up the small particles of earth. The dust struck a harsh tattoo on the side of the jeeps as we assembled our field microscope on the tailgate. Huddled from the wind with our bandanas drawn up to protect our face from the swirling dust, we must have appeared somewhat odd amongst the prize racing horses pawing the ground, Bankhar puppies milling about our feet, and cows softly complaining. Leaning close in as we mounted our first sample, I squinted through the dust to see the display as the microscopic world pops into view. We are able to see the cells that make up the blood of the animal beside us and count their numbers. We are able to see the microscopic parasites that live in its gut. We are able to see all this with our untrained eyes and we imagine what could be accomplished by another dozen such pairs of eyes equipped with the power to peer into the microscopic world. Just by documenting what they see, they have the power to bring the global medical community to bear on monitoring the spread of a disease among their livestock and livelihood.

My origin story started on my National Geographic grant field work in Mongolia. Though I had already been invigorated by the prospect of making a positive social impact, it was on that trip that I discovered how I wanted to make that impact: human-centered design. It took plenty of reading and researching afterward, but I had found that what truly compelled me about this project - what maintained it as a constant interest into the evening well after my day job had ended - the human-centered nature of the work. I knew the people that my work would be affecting, had talked to them and heard their stories, and I had the skills to do something about what I had discovered to be truly impactful to them.

I packed up all the engineering knowledge I had accumulated in the years previous at Bucknell University and six years in prototyping biomedical device instrumentation in research labs and went to fill the rest of my toolbox with design skills at Northwestern University’s Engineering Design Innovation program. Since then I have applied my full set of tools as CTO of my own startup and as a product strategist for internal incubators and consultant to top companies.

Mission: Masters-trained and with 15 years of experience in both the empirical and empathic sides of the toolbox, I seek to promote positive social impact by innovating and delivering novel products and services driven by deep user and business understanding.

If I’m not at the studio, you can find me in the kitchen coming up with culinary creations, tasting craft brews, or climbing rock faces. I’m currently located in the Cleveland area.