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I considered many career paths in design but ultimately fell in love with the versatility industrial design would allow me. I moved to Detroit because of the strong product design program at CCS.
There, competition and collaboration with other students drove me to produce increasingly high quality work.
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Wanting to bolster and formalize my digital design education and understand the complexities of working on the web and with software products.
Through DesignLab, in addition to the curriculum, I worked with a dedicated mentor who guides me on best practices and received feedback through group critiques.
As a project manager at 100K Ideas I worked with budding entrepreneurs it was my responsibility to meet with clients, onboard them into our process and complete an assessment into the viability of a business idea and co-ordinate with specialty roles in marketing, engineering and design. Businesses ranged from software, service, hardware and non-profits.
Throughout my time at 100K Ideas, I volunteered to represent the organization at a number of tabling events throughout the community, as well as opportunities to connect with kids about entrepreneurship and design.
One of these events that intersected tabling and youth outreach was during the Michigan Invention Convention at The Henry Ford museum. With another coworker, we encouraged adults and kids alike to come sketch with us and inspire innovation.
In the city of Flint, I also lead sketching and design workshops at locations like the Sylvester Broome Empowerment Village.
'Flint Kids Eat Fresh Food' is a multi-organization effort to encourage healthy habits for Flint Youth. The program provides every K-12 student in the city of Flint with a $25 worth of vouchers they can redeem at the Flint Farmers' Market. In 2019, they partnered with 100K Ideas to design the booklet that would house the coupons, and I led the design effort.
It was really amazing to see the kind of impact my work could have, view the full project below!
In 2017 I took an internship at toy giant Hasbro working as an industrial designer for their beloved NERF line of products. This was a unique opportunity for a number of reasons, not least of which was living in another corner of the country.
Understanding how products are conceived, designed and developed in a corporate setting at the highest level was enlightening. I learned how labor is divided between different roles on the team and how decisions were made that led to a final product we pass on the shelves.
A valuable experience came from work I did with a team of interns from other departments, to create and pitch a new toy concept. I also got the opportunity to attend the 2017 NY Toy Fair trade show in Manhattan.
The German Marshall Fund of the U.S. hosted the BUILD conference that brought together a select group of city leaders, urban planners and change-makers across North America and Europe.
The conference is normally held in Bilbao, Spain. However, in 2018 they decided to host it in Detroit and when I heard about the opportunity to volunteer as a staff member, I jumped.
Volunteering for this was one of the best decisions I ever made, I met amazing people, bounced all around the city and learned more than I could ever hope to about new ideas for improving conditions in cities and for the people who live there.
IDSA, the Industrial Designer's Society of America hosts the annual International Design Conference and I've volunteered as a staff member at 2 of these conferences, in 2016 nearby in Detroit, and in 2018 I drove all the way down to New Orleans to volunteer again!
I wanted to attend the conferences, and volunteering behind the scenes was a great way to get access to speakers, events and networking on a budget.
In addition to volunteering at the national level, I was an active member and held a cabinet position as the communications coordinator for our chapter at CCS.
I handled text, email and fb notifications about the group as well as ran poster campaigns and created a handy 'Events Calendar' that served Industrial Design students at the college. Our chapter also arranged trips to district conferences in Pittsburgh, PA and Columbus, OH.
During a conversation with a longtime Professor, Steve Schock, he mentioned he was working with a project hoping to build a whole neighborhood of tiny homes for low income residents in the city of Detroit.
I volunteered for the project and bounced between construction and design. The project, run by Cass Community Social Services now includes 25 unique homes ranging from 225-450 sq ft.
From my second semester freshman year through the end of my Junior year I was the majority contributor to the College's official Instagram page @ccs_detroit.
It was a great opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and get involved in activities in every corner of campus.
I wanted to get comfortable using the various tools of the woodshop and I knew the best way to do that was to spend as much time as possible there.
After 4 years working shifts in the shop, not only did I learn a lot and make a lot, but there was no more than a small X-acto blade cut under my watch.
