A product designer based in New York City, I didn't plan my path through startup, civic tech, and enterprise. I took opportunities as they came. Looking back, there's a pattern I didn't see at the time: I keep landing in the messy middle of things - ambiguous systems, unclear ownership, technical constraints nobody's untangled yet.

It started at a small AR startup, where I learned to design end-to-end with almost no guardrails - you own the whole problem, or nobody does. Then I moved into civic tech, working on tools for NYC tenants, flood-risk data, and public services. Now I'm at Verizon, designing identity architecture across an app ecosystem serving ~100 million customers. Three very different environments, one constant: I keep ending up where the systems are tangled and the ownership is unclear. I don't know if I'd say I love it. I'm just good at making it make sense.

Outside of work, I'm usually cooking - Northern Vietnamese dishes I can't find anywhere in the US - or hunting down the next great Vietnamese spot in the city.