I currently lead UX Design and strategy for Freedom Mortgage’s external-facing site. I joined the company a week before everything locked down for the pandemic in March of 2020. In my time at Freedom, I’ve had the pleasure of growing into myself as a lead designer, people leader, brand evangelist, fierce collaborator, and UX advocate. I joined at a time when Freedom’s UX was still in it’s infancy and have partnered closely with my direct leader as the second UX hire to build out a team of cross-functional UX Designers and researchers.
Prior to joining Freedom, I came up in my career through The Vanguard Group in Malvern, PA. I was hired into their “Technology Leadership Program” directly out of college for eager, hungry and promising young technical talent. Although excited to diversify my knowledge and exposure through this intensive 2-year rotational program, I fell in love with UX the moment I learned that it existed from the Information Architect on my agile team. It seemed like a match made in heaven between my dual degrees in "Information Technology and Informatics" and "Visual Arts" with a concentration in Design!
While I learned everything I could during my Java development and Systems Acceptance Testing rotations, I made sure to network with other UX professionals in my organization and take on as many design and UX extracurriculars as possible to prove my aptitude and desire, which ultimately paid off as I was granted a final rotation in the User Experience Design group of the Financial Advisors Services division.
After the end of my rotational program, I launched in a full-time UX Design role on the company’s internal tools team developing a Leadership-exclusive professional development app (“VCoach”), custom SharePoint sites, the company Intranet, and various external-facing sites (“PressRoom”). UX has been a love that's stood the test of time and I look forward to many more years to come.
I consider it my mission to eradicate all “usable wrong things” wherever I am. Some of my coworkers have joked that I have a signature emphasis on the way I ask "why?" when I'm challenging assumptions. I do my best work when I am excited to learn something new. Put me on a journey I’ve never worked before, and I’ll take off running! I love following projects from start to finish - from a vague idea of what might be a point of pain for our users, to design thinking, to user interviews, to wireframing, to user testing, to iterating, to UX/UI and/or Visual Design, to Heuristics, to prototyping, then continuing to follow it’s progress once it’s out in the wild and bringing it right back to beginning of the process again for improvements! I thrive in highly collaborative environments, but also enjoy some heads-down time to focus on my own work and learning.
In my (rare) free time, I enjoy spending time in the city, woods or beach with my family and friends, hiking, biking, running, anime, illustrating, astrology (I’m a Pisces), kpop, 70’s rock, and being a total foodie. If we are at an impasse, I can be bought with sushi. I am Half-Korean and proud! I am colorful, dreamy, social and empathetic. My strengthsfinder strengths are Communication, Learner, Strategic, Activator and Woo. If any of this sounds of interest to you, feel free to drop me a line!
