Saturday morning cartoons and Legos shaped my childhood. When I say, “Legos,” I don’t mean the organized, coordinated kind that came with instructions. No! I mean the kind that lived in a pile, in a box, in the closet, under the stairs, tucked away for rainy days. But I loved it. Legos kept my hands busy and granted me the power to build whatever my mind could conjure. Cartoons enabled me to never be confined to the idle world at hand. I could always escape, dream big, and imagine the adventures that awaited me.

 

Time skip to today, I still love cartoons and legos, but those childhood pleasures have manifested themselves a little differently. In my professional career they appear as strategy and design. Strategy as the cartoons and design as the Legos. 

As a strategist, I imagine new ways products and services live in the world. I ask, "What’s going to be energizing or impactful to the consumer? Or evoke a visceral reaction?" As I research, I seek context — the bigger story behind data. I find that little something that helps me connect. That something that is real and authentic. And as a designer, I create. I do. I produce. I breathe life into ideas and make them real. There is so much excitement in what is yet to be uncovered and visualized. Everyday I look forward to new opportunities to explore.