WHY ME

That's not a brag — it's a compulsion.

I’ve often been dropped into rooms where everyone had years of specialized context on me. Instead of being intimidated, I treat that gap as a roadmap—I listen, identify what I don't know, and sprint to close it before the next meeting. Once my brain locks onto something, it's over; I will out-learn, out-build, and out-deliver the room. Every time.

I started at MCAD with a sketchbook while everyone else had a laptop loaded with Adobe. Within a semester, I was the one setting the bar.

Years later, I landed a corporate design seat; full rig, staging websites for law firms and legal clients. Before my first year was even halfway through, leadership pulled me into conversations that out-scaled the role they hired me for, and they wanted to get ahead of burning me out before it happened.

Somewhere in there I turned into a bottomless sponge. Everything I've ever learned — on the clock and off it — gets kept, filed, and eventually put back to work. I'll tell you straight when I don't know something. I just won't stay in that spot long, and I keep a record of everything I pick up along the way so it's ready the next time it's useful. The result is a genuinely ridiculous range: web development, brand and design systems, marketing, event production, legal-industry design work, retail and motorsports, custom vehicle work — and, most of all right now, building and development, the lane I'm running toward hardest.

Ask anyone who's worked with me, and you'll hear a version of the same joke or warning: "Here comes Theresa" — strolling up nonchalant, giant shark floaty in tow, right before cannonballing into the deep end. I make a splash; it’s kind of my thing. But that’s the actual point of the splash. It’s never about showing off — it’s about breaking the surface tension so everyone else can breathe. It’s helping the room realize it’s not one boat against another, but getting everyone aligned so we all win. People who start out guarded, intimidated, or entirely unsure what to make of me end up finding out the same thing: once I’m in the water, I’m swimming for all of us. And that's usually how an uneasy first impression flips into an airtight partnership.

Right now, that room is building and development. Give me a job description that fits and I'll do it well. Give me one that doesn't quite fit anything on paper — that's usually where I do my best work.