About Me
Product thinker.
Platform builder. Game designer at heart.
I'm a Product Manager at Yale University, where I own the roadmap, governance, and operations of a shared web platform used by 2,400+ people across one of the most decentralized universities in the country. My path here started with game design — and the instincts I built there show up in everything I do.
I care about making things that genuinely work for the people using them, not just things that look good in a Figma file.
My Story
From game worlds to university systems
I went to school for Game Design at Quinnipiac University, drawn by how games can completely captivate players and give them a space to express their creativity in another world. What I fell in love with wasn't the engines or the code. It was the storyboarding, the user testing, and the UI design: the craft of thinking through how someone would actually experience something.
When I graduated, I went back for my master's degree, and that's where I discovered UX. It clicked immediately. It was everything I loved about game design, just in the context of the web. The same empathy for users, the same obsession with flow and friction, the same satisfaction when something finally just works.
My first role after graduation was at Timex, designing the Family Connect smartwatch experience. From there I joined Yale, where I've spent the last several years growing from UX Analyst II to UX Analyst III to Product Manager. Each step has pushed me to think less about individual screens and more about the systems, people, and decisions behind them.
What I Care About
Mission over metrics
Higher education UX interests me for a specific reason: it's not about shareholder value or extracting money from users. When I'm working at Yale, I'm working in the context of making experiences better for students, faculty, and staff: people who are there to learn, teach, and push the boundaries of what's known.
There's something meaningful about being a small part of that mission. Yale has been advancing education for over 300 years. When I remove friction from a content editing workflow or redesign an authentication flow, I'm not moving a conversion metric. I'm giving a department administrator back thirty minutes to focus on something that actually matters.
That's the work I want to do. Not design for its own sake, but design in service of something larger.
The Gaming Connection
The domain is different. The job is not.
My background is in game design. My day job is running a live platform at a university. These are less different than they sound.
Managing a platform that 2,400+ users depend on — where adoption is earned not mandated, where stakeholders have competing priorities, and where new features have to work for an entire community, not just the unit that funded them — is structurally identical to live service product management. The governance committee is a player council. The vendor collaborations are partner studio integrations. The weekly agile loop is live ops.
I've spent twenty years as a World of Warcraft player, and the last several years writing addons for it. I understand how game systems create player behavior, what makes onboarding succeed or fail, and why friction in authentication flows feels the same whether you're logging into a university portal or a game client. I'm not crossing into gaming from the outside. I'm coming home.
Beyond the Screen
When I'm not shipping
- ⚾
Baseball
Lifelong Mets fan. Every season is an act of faith.
- 🏒
College Hockey
Quinnipiac Bobcats hockey. Watched the program grow into one of the best in the country.
- 👧
Family
Dad to an almost 2-year-old daughter. She keeps me humble and moving fast.
- 🎮
World of Warcraft
Twenty-year player currently exploring addon development. UX for Azeroth.
Want to see the work?
Browse case studies from Yale and Timex, or get in touch if you want to talk shop.