I use play to design ways for people of all ages to critically and confidently engage with the future.

The challenge

Parent-child interactions during everyday routines shape children's self-awareness and self-regulation. But parents lack a practical playbook for the moment: tantrums in transitions, meltdowns at bedtime, the noise of an overstimulated grocery aisle. They're winging it under fatigue, isolation, and pressure with no time to learn.

Theory of change

Treat parents as the primary learners. Children's growth follows from changed parent behavior. Pebbles is built on the intersection of three frameworks:

What I designed

A mobile experience for parents of children ages 3–11 that goes through the following steps:

• Learn: 2–3 minute animated micro-lessons covering interoception, emotion identification, co-regulation, impulse control, and stress management.
• Practice: 5–10 minute scenario activities curated from UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, Character Lab, Panorama, and others.
• Reflect & Share: 1–2 minute audio or text reflections, formative self-assessment, and asynchronous peer learning across parents.

How we measured learning

Two longitudinal signals: engagement over time as a proxy for sustained practice, and reflection evolution with qualitative coding to signal changes in behaviour over time.

The challenge

Learning Home Volunteers is a non-profit serving low-income families in San Mateo County. They put a strong play-based curriculum into homes via low cost themed kits. The design challenge was to extend that craft into a place where parents and children already spend time together: the grocery store.

The frame we built on

We anchored the curriculum in four traditions, each with a sharp pedagogical implication:

The six units

• Aisles: Geometry & spatial awareness
• Food labels & receipts: Print, symbols & early literacy
• Produce: Shapes & colors
• Shelf-stable foods: Putting it all together
• Cart: Movement & motor skills
• Waiting in line: Patience & prediction

The challenge

Build a physical experience that creates real quality time between parents and children, and that develops kids' social-emotional skills over repeated play.

The process

We started with a paper prototype and once the play loop felt right, we re-built the artefact in a higher-resolution form: laser-cut and engraved board, 3D-printed pieces, hand-painted finishing.

View walkthrough on Canva →

What I owned

I owned the entire student journey from the moment they clicked "apply" to when they graduated from one of our programs. This included managing Selection, Curriculum Design, and Program Delivery teams. In my last year at ALX, we had over 180,000 graduates from our various programs which ranged in length from 8 weeks to 1 year.

How I worked

• Defined and managed projects from initial scoping and requirements through research, design, and delivery, partnering with content, ops, and selection teams across the African continent.
• Built agile rituals (rapid prototyping, cohort pilots, structured retros) that let us iterate curriculum between cohorts rather than between years.
• Orchestrated specialized partners (video, animation, visual design) when the live experience needed support beyond the room.
• Held a quality bar: continual review for relevance, effectiveness, impact, and scalability against learner feedback and stakeholder input.

What it taught me

This was a valuable learning opportunity for delivering programs at high scale while maintaining a high quality bar at low cost. I developed my strategic skills and began to engage with AI as a thought partner and facilitator of strong business practices.

What I owned

I led strategy, design, and professional development for the three teams that shape a learner's journey at Moringa: learning design, classroom delivery, and product development. The school moved roughly 750 learners a year through cohort-based software-engineering and data-science programs, and my job was to make sure each cohort got better than the last.

How I worked

• Translated curriculum strategy into instructor practice through structured coaching cycles (observation, feedback, deliberate practice).
• Aligned the learning, classroom, and product teams around shared cohort metrics so the experience felt continuous to learners rather than handed off between functions.
• Iterated curriculum between cohorts based on outcomes data and instructor field reports, closing the loop fast enough that learners felt the change.

What it taught me

This was the role where I learned how a learning organization actually functions. Curriculum is one slice; the institutional muscle around it — how teams talk to each other, how feedback travels, how decisions about a single cohort get made — is what determines whether a program can scale and stay good. By the time I stepped into the VP of Learning role at ALX, I had a working model for how to build alignment across the three layers that determine whether a program actually changes outcomes for learners.

What I owned

I was a member of the founding team of the university to craft a unique blended learning model. I designed and facilitated the "Projects Course" on project management in partnership with real world companies. This involved crafting learning outcomes, learning experiences and assessments for a 1-year curriculum to deliver to students from 22 African countries.

As a faculty team lead, I crafted and executed a personal and professional development strategy for a team of 12 facilitators delivering to 180 students. This also included setting team culture and values, onboarding, accountability, and operational system building. I also managed the process of redesign to a new version of the ALU first year curriculum based on feedback from our first year of operation.

How I worked

• As a curriculum designer, I employed backward design principles to build skills maps with observable learning outcomes that formed the basis of assessments and content.
• As a classroom facilitator, I encouraged students to own their learning journeys, and pushed for critical engagement with all aspects of the curriculum.
• As a faculty lead, I focused on teacher training and ensuring smooth classroom operations across our various classes.

What I learned

The Faculty Lead position was my first experience leading a team, and it was a challenging and rewarding role. The startup education environment was ever-changing and required a high degree of flexibility that helped prepare me for future leadership roles. My time as a designer and classroom teacher also helped ground my pedagogical practice as I learned more about what works in education.