About Me
I’ve always been someone who likes to make things — neat, functional, beautiful things. Long before I ever wrote code, I was the kid sketching in my notebook, rearranging my room for the fourth time, and getting lost in old manuals and magazines just to understand how something worked. I’ve always been wired for both creativity and structure, and I think that’s why front-end engineering eventually became such a natural home for me.
My path into tech wasn’t linear. I was studying Agriculture in the early ’90s — spending my days learning about soil science and crop management — when the early web started bubbling up. Something about those early pages lit up the same part of me: the idea that you could arrange elements, create order, tell a story, make something people could step into. So I started teaching myself, built my first commercial website for a charter fishing company in 1996, and found myself completely hooked.
Since then, my career has been a long, winding, exhilarating journey across countries, industries, and eras of the internet. I’ve worked at agencies big and small, moved from South Africa to Dublin to London to San Francisco, and built everything from massive portals serving millions of users to tiny interactive moments that exist for just a few weeks. Along the way I’ve created sites for brands like Volkswagen, Audi, Google, Facebook, Apple, Nike, BBC, Disney, and more. One of my favorite memories is seeing the interactive animations I built for Google G Suite not only on the homepage but also projected floor-to-ceiling in the Google campus lobby — a surreal reminder that a line of code written at midnight can end up in unexpected places.
What really drives me, though, isn’t the scale or the logo on the brief. It’s the feeling of transforming complexity into something simple, intuitive, and genuinely enjoyable. I love that moment when a layout locks into place, when an animation suddenly feels alive, when a complicated flow becomes effortless because the UI is finally saying exactly what the user needs to hear. I’m endlessly curious, always learning, and happiest when design and engineering meet in the middle.
I’ve spent the last several years working at design-driven, forward-thinking companies like Beyond, Instrument, and now Wayward — places that value craft, experimentation, and creativity. I’ve led high-profile launches, built interactive storytelling experiences, and contributed to large-scale platforms and tools. But at the core, I still get the same spark I felt building that first website in 1996: the thrill of making something thoughtful, beautifully made, and genuinely helpful to someone on the other end.
Outside of work, I’m usually in my garden — my other creative outlet — tending plants, taking photos, or sketching little watercolor creatures for The Odd Garden, my side project and personal love letter to the Pacific Northwest. It keeps me grounded, patient, and reminds me why I care so much about creating things people actually enjoy interacting with.
At the end of the day, what makes me tick is simple: I love building things that feel good to use. Technology moves fast, but care and craft never go out of style.