After graduating from the Ringling School of Art & Design with a Bachelor’s in Illustration, I spent 16 years working for the Nielsen Company, a leading global information & measurement company. Devoting nearly half of my life a job that, in the end, offered only financial stability, I needed to find a career that would offer new challenges, and return greater rewards by combining my design and professional backgrounds. To level up this quest, I completed the Ruby on Rails program at The Iron Yard's Tampa Bay campus (RIP, long live the Suncoast Developers Guild). I accepted a position as Web Developer for Star2Star Communications in Sarasota/Bradenton, FL. Just over a year and a half later, I was able to transition into one of Star2Star's UX/UI designer positions where I am enjoying the collaborative environment finding solutions to a wide variety of design problems.