At Trilogy, I work as a digital strategist for progressive & non-profit clients. I help organizations and politicians understand their audiences, define strategies, and develop cross-channel digital solutions.
In the wake of the 2016 election, I co-founded Rapid Resist, a non-profit that mobilizes local communities via peer-to-peer text message. In the the battle over Obamacare, we texted thousands of folks in Alaska and Maine, and turned out hundreds to the offices of key Senators to vocalize their displeasure with efforts to strip away health care access. Read about our work in Fast Company.
In 2015-16, I worked to actualize my principles in feminism, environmental stability, and social justice as part of the Hillary for America team. I performed a variety of roles across the country with the goal of electing the first female POTUS. My experiences in the Organizing Team culminated in seven months in Southern Ohio as a Regional Organizing Director, managing a team of seven organizers. Previously, I performed legal Opposition Research in courthouses across the West, covered 64 counties as an organizer in Western Kansas, and analyzed the effects of digital strategy as a data & design fellow for the Digital Team in Iowa.
In San Francisco, I was a core member of the small Product team at PaperG, a B2B creative management platform driving programmatic ad creation for agencies and brands, and the industry leader in automatic display ads for publishers. As a Product Manager I led cross-team research, design, and development around new features and customer satisfaction, focusing on our AI-fueled instant design technologies. The complex and emerging industry of ad technology and the environment of a fast-growing startup kept me fluent in research-driven decisions, flexibility, and leadership. Revenues more than doubled in my time at PaperG - millions of dollars in growth driven by entirely new products we developed for complex markets.
At Yale, I dedicated my undergraduate studies to Cognitive Science with a focus on Design, AI, & Computational Vision. Courses and opportunities outside my major allowed me to explore other interests in Computer Science, Design, Architecture, and Philosophy. Freshman year, I undertook an intenstive and selective Great Books program called Directed Studies. I also completed intermediate level courses and summer language study in French & Chinese.
Outside of class, I worked as the Designer for the Yale Office of Sustainability, the President of Design at Yale, incorporating design thinking and graphics into both coursework and extracurriculars. I also spent a large portion of my time at Yale within Dwight Hall, the Center for Service & Social Justice at Yale, leading efforts to combat hunger and homelessness in the New Haven community. My goal then and now is to combine technical & design strengths with a desire to have a lasting positive impact on society.
Everything on here, unless otherwise noted, is my own work - all photographs, design, and code. I built this site using Nanoc, a Ruby static site generator, with Haml templating & Markdown. For a more updated design portfolio, contact me.
Yale College, BA Cognitive Science, Class of 2013
Northside College Prep HS, Chicago, IL, Class of 2009
Trilogy Interactive, Sr. Digital Strategist
Rapid Resist, Co-founder & Deputy Director
Hillary for Ohio, Regional Organizing Director
Hillary for Kansas & Missouri, Organizer
Hillary for Iowa, Digital Fellow
Know Your IX, Designer, Campus Organizing Toolkit
PaperG, Product Manager
Prum Ornithology Lab, Researcher
Yale Office of Sustainability, Graphic Designer
Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, Intern
Dwight Hall at Yale, Student Executive Committee, PR Coordinator
Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project, Assistant Director; PR Coordinator
Hunger Heroes Soup Kitchen, Co-coordinator
Design at Yale, Co-president
Yale Peabody Museum, Senior Fellow & SciCORPS Coordinator
Proof of the Pudding Jazz A Cappella, Design & Event Coordinator; Webmaster
Birds perceive colors humans can't even imagine. Elaborate plumage taking advantage of that sensory ability is particularly evident among birds of clear sexual dimorphism (ornate males, plain females) and polygamous mating behaviors. Darwin's lesser-known theory of mate choice, sexual selection, explains how such elaborate plumage occurs: The selection of certain surface-level traits by female birds, such as feather patterning and color, constitutes an aesthetic. These aesthetic traits drive the evolution of specific but arbitrary standards of beauty, which manifest in the extreme plumage differences between closely-related species.
For my senior thesis and the summer following, I worked with Professor Richard Prum (Yale Ornithology) to investigate this "evolution of beauty." I used a combination of avian color science and hyperspectral imaging to model bird vision, then analyzed color disparity across closely related species. First, I collected a thorough data set of feather coloration from museum specimens at AMNH, Yale Peabody, and Harvard Zoology. Then I statistically mapped the dispersal of pigment & structural color in the Cotingidae family using data analysis tools I wrote in R as well as phylogenetic analysis software. I compared the rate of dispersal to methods of sexual selection (polygamy vs. monogamy) to determine the significance of "arbitrary" traits.
I also contributed to development of a camera and software needed to visualize the full range of ornament on birds, a large part of which we cannot see with our limited visual spectrum. This hyperspectral modeling system incorporated ultraviolet data into gradient maps of the feather patterns of birds, using tools from Computational Vision & Graphics.
