MY STORY

I grew up in Vorarlberg, a small Austrian state in the Alps, between Lake Constance, forests, and the Swiss-German border. But home wasn't just Austrian. My parents are Vietnamese immigrants. They were hardworking, loving, and made sure we never forgot where we came from. Growing up between two cultures shaped me more than anything else, and gave me a habit of switching contexts, languages, and ways of thinking before I even knew what I was doing.

What I remember most is how creative our family was. My dad often built furniture for our home, and my mom enjoyed sewing clothes for us. My brother and I spent hours building Lego worlds and inventing games on paper. That love for creating never left me, in many forms: drawing, tinkering, and building with my hands. And, for many years, dance in a troupe and classical piano lessons.

Still, my first career was in management and operations. Over 5+ years, I learned how to communicate across cultures, navigate stakeholders and priorities, and get things done. In 2020, during the lockdown, I took the leap and went back to my creative roots. I completed a second master's, this time in User Experience.

Today, I design for creative apps. The question that drives most of my work: how do you keep the depth without the friction? I work that question end-to-end, across research, interaction design, prototyping, and evaluation, and experiment with AI where it genuinely helps.