origins

Growing up, I marveled at my grandmother’s artistry and creativity. I remember asking her how she painted trees, grass, and snow in her landscape paintings. Throughout elementary school and well into high school, art was consistently one of my favorite classes. On my first trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for my high school art class, I was in awe. To this day, Van Gogh remains one of my favorite artists.

my big break

Despite loving art, I had never really considered a career in it. Back in 2004, I stumbled into graphic design when I was hired by my current employer to work in their manufacturing department assembling audiobooks. At that time, we were a very small company of fifteen people. Our business was growing quickly, and our only audio engineer was swamped. To help lighten his workload, I offered to take a task off his plate: designing CD labels. It was my first foray into using professional design software and I was immediately hooked! Endlessly curious, I remember spending countless hours learning as much as I could to master CorelDRAW (don’t hold that against me).

Within one year, I was transitioned out of manufacturing, into marketing, and was quickly promoted to Junior Graphic Designer. In that role, I assisted our only graphic designer in creating audiobook covers. I spent many years learning the ins and outs of Photoshop and later spearheaded the effort to switch all our software to Adobe in 2009 (goodbye CorelDRAW!).

I later took a break from working full-time and refocused my attention on school and finishing out my degree at Middlesex Community College. In 2016, I graduated at the top of my program with a degree in Multimedia and earned an Academic Excellence award. Go me!

a bit more about me

Outside of work, I spend lots of time learning web development, riding my Peloton, and watching Golden Girls. I also love traveling, cooking and eating, and playing video games. I live in CT with my amazing partner and our very spoiled cat, James.