Everybody has a “Why” while navigating through life. There is no one pathway for discovering life’s purpose. Still, there are many ways you can gain insights into yourself, whether personal or professing. I was fortunate to discover a career early on that inspires me to learn, continuously grow and empower myself and others around me with purposeful, creative, and memorable experiences for all. The desire to be part of a solution to a problem that enhances individual lives is why I chose this career.

As a young child, I spent countless hours orchestrating creative and thoughtful projects through grade school. I remember vividly a grade school project in which I needed to create an emerging idea at that time. I created a remote control device that would assist those with disabilities to enrich their lives. At that moment, I knew I wanted to make a difference by creating thoughtful and meaningful experiences. I have always enjoyed sketching out my ideas, solving problems, and being creative. These feelings and actions carried through high school and I knew I wanted to pursue a career in design. Soon after graduating high school, I enrolled and obtained my Associate’s Degree in Graphic Design and Videography to begin my passion for design, and I haven’t looked back since.

Fast forward, for the past 18 years, I have enjoyed every moment of my design career. My career started as a traditional designer at several advertising agencies that catered to small to medium-sized companies. I learned the fundamentals of UI design for traditional print and received several American Advertising Awards on a local and national level. These experiences gave me a strong start to a foundation that has carried with me.

I then began to see a designer’s role shift as technology evolved and the expectation of a designer changed. While the demand shifted I did as well by obtaining my Bachelor’s Degree in Business / Marketing and taught myself how to code in a variety of languages. then shifted and started designing for the web. This is when I learned the difference between print and web medians. From accessibility, dimensionality, resolution, and interactivity to name a few. I gained knowledge of analytics, pay-per-click advertising, and more in-depth development of micro-sites, interactive banners, and product demos. It was fascinating to be the one who executes the initial steps of color combinations, usability, and aesthetics to keep the entire layout balanced and bring it to life as a functional web page by using a variety of appropriate coding languages.

I soon found myself fully emerged in developing more and was employed at an eLearning agency, Allen Interactions, followed by a financial bank, First Citizens Bank, and then ultimately at a technical company, Lenovo. This is where I was introduced to the Agile methodologies, personas, and working effectively across functioning teams. But there came a point in time I thought about quality over quantity. And I felt compelled to decide to scale down on the developer occupation to fully succeed in the design occupation. Tendered 8 years at Lenovo as a Senior User Experience Designer, Senior Strategic Designer, and Technical Lead, where I learned so much. I began scratching the surface of research, human-centered design, and product management. I’ve grown as a designer, and researcher and I always look for opportunities to keep my development skills up to par. I constantly strive to continue learning and growing professionally and personally. I have since joined a global team as a Lead Product Designer at Genesys which are a leader in omnichannel customer experience & contact center solutions working on self-service automation and platform projects in their customer experience platform.

These life experiences tell me to keep pursuing, dreaming, and resiliency with ambiguity. My career pursuit is a lifelong process of learning, to continue to push my boundaries and gain knowledge through professional and personal experiences. For us to live life to the fullest, we must continually look for ways to improve.