Craft got me hired.
Business impact kept me employed.

I got into design by accident. Wanted 3D animation for films. Coasted on talent instead of skill. Couldn't get hired. Spent a year unemployed, living at home, applying to nothing because nothing was biting.

Went back to school. Saved a full year to pay for it. Didn't speak to a single classmate for 10 months, just worked. Stayed late. Didn't want friends. Wanted to be good. Portfolio day: the top company in the room picked me. They offered $30k. I negotiated $40k.

First real job: the senior designer quit two months in. No mentor. No protection. Sink or swim. So I stopped copying what the last designer did and started thinking from first principles. Actual research. Actual opinion. Actual bets. That's when the work started landing.

Four and a half years later I was the lead. User base: 1M to 3.2M. Then Director of UX, a team of three, a product built from zero that hit $1.1M ARR in year one and grew to 50% of company revenue. Then got let go. Twice. Same year.

The arrogant version of me didn't survive that. A clearer one did. For most of my career I obsessed over craft: perfect dashboards, pixel-perfect login screens. I didn't know any of it had to tie back to revenue, retention, efficiency. Then I learned about time to value. Everything changed. Craft gets you a paycheck. Business impact gets you a seat at the table. That clarity became the Builder Kickoff™, a facilitation framework for turning a business problem into an aligned team decision before anyone opens Figma. Teams walk in with a fuzzy idea. They leave with scope, a business case, and a plan.

16 years in the startup wild west. Principal Product Designer. Based in Montreal. Outside of that: husband, new dad, early mornings, too much coffee. Less interested in output for its own sake. More interested in work that actually moves something.