I moved to Philadelphia in August 2005 to attend the Master's of Industrial Design Program at the University of the Arts. My thesis work focused on Contextual Manufacturing, producing locally appropriate designs and solutions. Since graduating I have been working on ways of promoting local manufacturing and design. In 2009 I launched a company called Tree Boom that is and will be a parent company to new ventures I see as key to redeveloping local networks of production. The first company started is Made in Philly.

Before moving to Philly I lived and worked in Austin, TX. While there I began to understand the capabilities of the design process and the potential to apply creativity to all things not just developing consumer products.

Over the past seven years, since an introductory course in permaculture at North Carolina State University, I have been working to develop sustainable environmental, economic, and social practices. In Philadelphia I have had the chance to combine my design and sustainable backgrounds to improving urban living as board member of Green Village Philadelphia and as GVP's new program and project director at Urban Studio.