December 2024
These days, I am:
Leading Design for Growth at Rakuten Rewards /
Sharing writings and paintings on Substack /
Reveling in Autumn, when NYC is its most festive and joyous :)
How I lead →
Take a peek into my processes as a design manager and designer
Recent Work
Head of Design at Nextdoor
12/20 - 01/23
Led Design for Neighbors
Grew happy teams
Shipped 0-1
Planned the Future
Designed for Delight
Director of Product Design at Figure Eight
(acquired by Appen)
09/18 - 12/20
Designed tools that enable AI/ML
Built a Design System
Designed for Delight
In the Past
UX Director at IBM iX
03/16-06/18
I led UX at the NYC iX studio while designing with AI, Blockchain and partnering with clients such as Coca Cola, Marriott
UX Director at Publicis
2/12-03/16
I led UX for Citi products including a redesign of thankyou.com, and massmoca.org
Creative Technologist at CNN
08/2012 - 12/2012
I partnered with editors, and journalists to find data that told stories and designed, and coded interactive visualizations for cnnmoney.com
Other Stuff
During my MFA at Parsons, I learned to code to turn ideas into prototypes. I turned the news into patterns, built an algae-inspired synthesizer using motion and light sensors, a time-traveling remote, and visualizations that responded to sound or mimicked the flocking of starlings.
For my thesis, I translated traditional weaving practices into current interfaces. Ask me about it :)
Summer Somewhere is a space I created to collaborate with block printers and weavers from India. I designed the brand/identity, website and art-directed and styled the photos. Behnaz Babazadeh shot the beautiful pictures. A block-printed scarf was the first manifestation of the idea.
I sketch and paint to tease out the essence of a single source of inspiration. Working with my hands and making art are core to my creative practice.
Brooklyn Diary, a beautiful book curated by Lena Corwin, features artists' studios, local favorites, art and photography from Brooklyn. I took photos of the Saipua studio for the book, using an old Minolta film camera that I've been shooting adventures with since 2008.
And an adventure for you to see while you are here
In Summer '14 we hiked the Fimmvörðuháls trail in Iceland. We were slightly apprehensive of finishing the trek in one day but managed to trek the 16 miles in 8.5 hrs despite the mostly very uncooperative weather. So worth it too. It definitely felt like one of the most dramatic one day hikes I've ever done.
The mars-looking part of the trail goes through lava fields from the 2010 eruption at Eyyafyallayökül. The storm at this point made the scenery so desolate, walking very tough and the trail markers so hard to find. There were lava fields and snow on the part of the trail aptly called 'The Ashtray'.
And after hours and hours of walking through the most 'no man's land' looking scenery, the view opened onto what we dubbed 'happy valley', so called for the vibrant arctic flowers, clear skies, and hope that we will make it back in time for the last bus.
