Bird Attorney not really

In 2018 I found myself helping newly arrived refugees navigate the maze of U.S. banking. Instead of lecturing them from a booklet as instructed, I sat down—through a translator—and got to know them and their story first. From that, I built a custom plan ("If you want X, here's exactly how you get it"), and watched them go from frustrated and confused to empowered in a few conversations. That moment cemented my belief that empathy—really listening first—turns complexity into clarity.

A few years later, five weeks into a Python-heavy bootcamp, we started learning web development out of necessity. I built a simple counter-app in JavaScript but wanted to style it. Thing is, I didn't know how. 5 hours later after watching Kevin Powell tutorials, I realized that I wanted to go into web development and not data analytics. CSS became my creative refuge and the gateway to component-driven React, then Next.js, then accessible, user-first UIs. Today, I bake keyboard navigation, ARIA labels, and focus states into every build - because if someone can't click it or see it, it doesn't work.

This empathy-first approach also finds its way into my sales approach. I'm not sure when it clicked for me, but I realized that the key to good sales is good service. You can come up with all the slick sales approaches you want, but at the end of the day the client is looking for someone they can trust, and if you can empathize with the client, the client can trust you.

When not coding or designing, you'll find me world-building in Crusader Kings III, sketching some half-formed fiction that will eventually be abandoned, or diving into engineering history, paleo-history, history in general, and of course Star Wars lore.

I want to join a quirky, UI/UX-first team where I can swear at sweat the small stuff and build features that make people pause, smile, and say, 'Oh, nice button.'