I’m a UX designer currently working at STP helping financial professionals accomplish complicated work with intuitive software and helping the company grow to service more businesses. My path to where I am today is… curvy.

I’ve always had a deep curiosity about what drives people. That led me to study psychology, first as an undergrad and later in a master’s program at Villanova. Early on, I sought meaningful impact working in a psych facility for adolescents with trauma—but realized I was driven to solve problems at the systems level. I began asking questions like, how might we improve at risk youth outcomes with services that address upstream problems? What upstream problems are there to be addressed? How are they being addressed now?

To gain clarity and expertise, I dove deeper into research—learning to ask better questions, zero in on core issues, and nurture my curious mind alongside others pursing similar passions. In a seminar, I heard from an alum who used her psych background to “remove friction in everyday life.”

That’s when I first heard the term UX.

I was captivated by how her work combined thoughtful problem-solving, perspective-seeking, and real-world application of skills I’d already been honing, like conducting research and partnering with stakeholders.

Some research and a few key conversations later, I was set on a career in UX.

As a “transplant” to the industry, I was fortunate to connect with a longtime friend—a software engineer at a local fintech company—just as they were looking to hire their first UX designer. They opened a role, and I joined while finishing my degree, hitting the ground running.

In this new role I made UX an integral part of business success. I took a company that was in it’s infancy with UX design, gained internal buy-in for user-focused problem-solving, helped our user accomplish their work with ease, led projects that won new contracts, and produced successful end-to-end designs. I am proud of having improved user success and trust, leading the product team to adopt design thinking in early product planning, and changing the company design culture.