Q. Have you always lived in Boston?
A. Boahn ‘n raised, kehd.
Q. How did you get into UX?
A. It all started on a Pokémon message board when I was about 15. For security purposes, users could only format posts with BBCode, a watered-down version of HTML. I did all you could do with it: change font colors, align things left and right, create links, put things in bulleted (and sometimes numbered!) lists.
Around the same time, I started teaching myself Adobe Photoshop. All the cool kids had graphic signatures and avatars and I wanted to be cool too. I devoured free web tutorials until the buttons and menus made sense. I got good enough where other users were commissioning me to create their own signatures and avatars. They’d give me an outline of what they wanted and I’d spend a weekend cutting up images, setting text, and arranging everything just so.
My mom thought I was wasting my life away on the Internet and turned on AOL parental controls to kick me offline after midnight (which I hacked around). It turns out what I was doing for fun was essentially coding webpages, interacting with clients, and design brands. These skills enabled me to get an after-school web development job, which lead to a freelancing career – eventually landing me my gig at Promoboxx.
Q. You love to dance, what’s your favorite type of music to dance to?
A. Anything EDM: techno, house, dubstep… if it’s synth-y and has a hypnotic beat I’m all over it.
Q. We know you can dance, but what is your hidden talent?
A. I wouldn’t call this a talent exactly, but I used to rap in high school. I’d host “Freestyle Fridays” at my house and battle my friends. We’d put a CD of beats on repeat and diss each other’s crushes.
Q. What has been your favorite part about working at Promoboxx so far?
A. The fact that I work in front of the Client Marketing team and get to join in on their frequent giggle sessions.
