Guidance & Growth

Mentorship

Sharing knowledge, fostering growth, and helping others navigate their design careers.

Three things have shaped my career more than anything else: a genuine attraction to problem-solving, lived experience, and mentorship.

Over the past six years, mentorship has taken up a growing share of that equation. Interestingly, not primarily from having great mentors, though I've been fortunate there, but from being one.

Mentors, Not Managers

I've worked for most of my career with what people often call "mentors, not managers." Each of them played a pivotal role in how I developed my craft: my approach to design, how I present work, how I prepare for milestones, and how I navigate complexity. I credit them fully for that foundation.

Teaching Forces Clarity

There's a familiar idea that the best way to learn something, or to test how well you understand it, is to teach it. I don't know who first said it, and I'm paraphrasing heavily, but the idea holds.

For the past six years, I've been a professional mentor. By professional, I mean I carry the title and am compensated for dedicating time to a structured platform and curriculum, mentoring individuals transitioning into UX/UI and product design.

Beyond that, I've mentored professionals across a wide range of backgrounds, industries, and seniority levels, from juniors to peers to executives. Each relationship is different, but they all require the same thing: presence, rigor, and accountability.

The Intensity of Curriculum-Based Mentorship

The curriculum-based mentorship has been the most intense. These engagements last no less than twelve months. Every week brings questions about process, best practices, real-world tradeoffs, and lived experience. There's design critique, portfolio review, feedback, motivation, and often, reassurance. You're helping someone make sense of the design process while also helping them understand what it means to be a designer working with other designers, engineers, and product managers.

A Commitment to Honesty

I made a commitment early on not to "bullshit my way through" answers. That commitment turned mentorship into an exercise in self-awareness. It required me to be genuine and honest, not just with mentees, but with myself.

The Rewards

The obvious reward is seeing others succeed. The less obvious benefit is how much it sharpened my own work. There's something about saying ideas out loud, and then holding yourself accountable to practice them, that turns what "sounds good on paper" into something actionable.

Expanding Reach

I continue to mentor with Springboard, but I've also expanded into a platform without a predefined curriculum. In some ways, that's even more challenging. There's no syllabus. No predictable path. I don't know what someone will bring into a session until they show up.

While most conversations still orbit design, and often design systems, the range of problems is broader and less constrained. This has been a new effort that has already contributed to meaningful connections around the world.

Why It Matters

What I enjoy most is the end of a session, when someone says I helped bring clarity or direction to something that felt tangled or uncertain.