I'm a product of the liberal arts. I trained as a social scientist first, then learned to build. The career arc isn't random: every stop was another room where people had a problem they couldn't fully name yet. I went in, listened, and built the fix.
I trained in the liberal arts (political science and interdisciplinary studies) to understand people first, and then I taught myself to build. That order matters. For 15 years I've gone into rooms where people had a problem they couldn't fully articulate yet, in geospatial analytics, supply chain, and public health, and I've learned that the right tool is rarely the first one anyone suggests.
My superpower isn't technology. It's the combination of genuine curiosity, deep listening, and the ability to translate what I hear into something that actually gets built. I ask better questions than most, and I stay on a problem until I actually understand it. Then I build the fix.
I'm Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Flourish & Thrive Labs, a WBE and SBA 8(a) certified public health technology company. I'm also a Fulbright Scholar and a three-time national keynote speaker. I once built a library-holds automation system for my own family because I couldn't walk past a broken process.
I've spent over a decade building, including taking F&T Labs from the ground up. Fifteen years across defense, supply chain, geospatial, and public health, and the instinct that runs through all of it hasn't changed: go toward the people, then build what they actually need.
I also build communities around the problems I care about. It's part of the work, not a side project. I grew a 2,000-person geospatial audience under the Tabulae Spatial brand, hosted Mappy Hours as a gathering point for the geospatial community, co-founded the Bulgarian English Speech Tournament Foundation (6 schools → 35+), and now run a monthly AI for Public Health Community of Practice. I've led multiple storytelling with data trainings for clients and spoken on national stages three times. The instinct is the same one I bring to product work: find where people are isolated or stuck, and create the thing that brings them together.
I'm based in Northern Illinois. I homeschool my daughter, co-run a company with my husband, and genuinely believe that the best product work starts with a real conversation.
Every role added a new domain. The instinct to go toward the people first was there from day one.
Fifteen years across defense, supply chain, geospatial, and public health. The domains changed constantly. One thing didn't: the same listening instinct that sends me toward people first also shows up in how I treat data. I don't trust a number until I've asked it the hard questions I'd ask a person.
AI is not a substitute for thinking critically about your data. Using AI for data analysis is a signal to pay closer attention to the limitations, not less.
Three-time national keynote speaker on AI in public health and geospatial. I speak from the inside. The case studies are mine, the failures are real, and people leave with something they can actually use.
I'm a verbal processor. I think out loud, I use voice memos constantly, and I work through problems in conversation. My best insights come from talking through a problem with a real person, not staring at a document.
I learned early how to work around obstacles. I have ADHD and dyslexia. I didn't read at grade level until fourth grade, and my whole career has run on the same engine: big ideas and sharp thinking, paired with the systems I've had to build to execute on them. That discipline isn't something I apply only to myself; it's exactly what I bring to the organizations I work with. It's also why I go toward the people first. I know what it's like to be the person the standard process wasn't designed for, so I build for the ones everyone else overlooks.
I categorize tasks by focus level. I built an automation for my family's library holds because I couldn't tolerate a broken process at home any more than at work. I apply the same problem-solving instinct to my own kitchen table that I bring to enterprise-scale work. The scale changes. The instinct doesn't.
I'm always up for a real conversation about a problem worth solving.
Based in Northern Illinois, open to remote.