As a kid, I lost myself for hours drawing and building things by hand. I obsessed over the small details that turned an idea into something real.

I found that same precision in coxing, where noticing a blade angle off by inches, or a stroke starting to break down, was the difference between a boat that moved as one and one that didn't. Three national championships later, I understood excellence as hundreds of small corrections, made in time, not one big moment.

That instinct followed me into UX. Sophomore year, I stumbled into design and spent a winter buried in research, learning why interfaces felt the way they did — the same instinct that once read a boat now reads a system. I gravitated toward the messier, less visible problems: data products, provisioning, internal tools, the infrastructure organizations depend on but rarely see.

UX became the bridge between my craft, my curiosity, and my drive to build things that hold up under pressure — on the water, and in the systems I design today.