Growing up in a small town around Pittsburgh there were two things I wholeheartedly knew: that I wanted to see the world and that my parents definitely couldn't afford college. Luckily my older brother joined the Army during my senior year of high school so I decided to one-up him and join the Navy. The prototypical “just change it up a bit so it doesn’t look like you copied” response.

 

7 years later I was able to live in countries I dreamed of visiting and visited countries I dreamed of seeing. Yet best of all, I could finally afford an education! Only through a GI Bill of course. Looking back, my military tenure was something I needed although it didn’t feel like it at the time, but I originally enlisted with the purpose of going to university. During one of my seemingly never-ending deployments, I finally figured out my academic passion from a leisure reading on a night watch. A book I ordered from Amazon called Phantoms of the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by Dr. V.S. Ramachandran piqued my curiosity for cognition. By the end of my second enlistment in 2019, I realized I got all I could out of the military then went on to get my BS in Psychology from the University of Dayton in 2023. After, I soon began my UX career at Claremont Graduate University.

 

Now studying UX seems like a far cry from neurology or theoretical cognitive research but as you look through my portfolio you can notice a trend. Understandably, my graduate class projects may never come to fruition but I still feel an insistent need to develop products that promote assistance for neurological debilitation. My undergraduate research assistantships let me practically help those in need with Behavioral Activation while still developing a solid foundation in cognition through VRDD. I came to realize a career that mediates between both would be my best fit. I am able to conduct empirical, formal research while still communicating with those the product is for. This coupled with my experience of data collection, analysis, dissemination, and product consolidation, at various levels of an organization, put me an in ideal situation to achieve in my newfound profession.