My Story

Growing up, I can remember watching my mom draft logos for my family’s organic berry farm on Quark Express, my head barely able to see above the desk. My favorite was when she would let me delete a sketch using Quark’s easter egg alien, with a full-on laser blast of ROYGBIV. When she had finally settled on an image, with a strong preference for high contrast, she would proudly print black and white logos onto sticky paper.

Then the family collaboration would start in earnest, where my sister and I would apply the sticky labels to freshly made jars of jam. Not all labels were perfectly horizontal, but my mom knew that wasn’t the point. My dad and I would then sell our jams at weekend Farmer’s Markets on blazing hot July afternoons.

When my dad was diagnosed with ALS, the ease of family life changed. His five year battle ended the same year my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She would pass away when I was 24.

These losses taught me that the assumptions of safety and predictability every child should know don’t always work out as planned, and these adverse experiences with health created an interest in mental health, as a way for me to give back to people whose expectations of life had also become unpredictable.

Social work had found me, and while its mission of beneficence seemed clear, I always felt the field lacked the toolkit to scale social change. Through my doctoral work, I believe this toolkit exists at the intersection of design and entrepreneurship, bringing my early family story full circle.