Former professional ballet dancer turned experience strategist — movement was always the first language. Now I research, design, and prototype the experiences that turn complex technologies and ambitious products into something people actually understand, trust, and use.
Research, strategy, and service design working as one discipline. Not two. At global scale.
Led product design strategy and global campaign launches across Microsoft's commercial and enterprise portfolio — spanning the Flexible Design System (a modular event furniture ecosystem deployed globally for partner demos and field events), the Microsoft 50th Anniversary campaign, video production, executive presentations, and large-scale activations. Operated as embedded creative director across product, field marketing, and events teams.
Website campaigns and digital strategy for Acura.com — and business transformation work across VML's ecommerce and enterprise lines of business.
Global launch strategy and brand narrative for Amazon's first cashierless grocery store — a first-of-its-kind retail experience redefining how people shop for everyday essentials.
Guest experience research and service expansion strategy for Sonder — uncovering unmet needs across the guest journey and defining a roadmap for elevated amenities, touchpoints, and programming to deepen loyalty across the brand's global portfolio of apartment-hotel properties.
Brand strategy and launch for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's first-ever Grand Challenge focused on U.S. education — redesigning Algebra 1 for Black, Latino, English Learner, and low-income students in 7th–9th grade. The initiative offered $100K planning grants and up to $1M pilot study grants, positioning mathematics equity as a civil rights imperative.
Moderated user research and UX strategy for the scalp care brand's DTC platform — conducting in-depth interviews and usability studies to surface friction in the purchase journey, then translating findings into prioritized product improvements, content strategy, and onboarding flows.
Designed and facilitated Meta's Responsible Innovation Dimensions framework — a first-of-its-kind program embedding ethical design thinking across product teams, mapping company principles to nine dimensions of responsible technology.
Signage design development for the Frederick P. Rose Hall public space redesign — translating the Jazz at Lincoln Center identity into a complete environmental wayfinding system.
Concept, launch strategy, and brand narrative for Nordstrom's Beauty Haven in partnership with POPSUGAR — a first-of-its-kind in-store beauty services experience redefining the retail beauty category.
Content strategy and editorial direction for two of Europe's most storied luxury maisons at AKQA. For IWC Schaffhausen, developed The Journal — a long-form digital editorial platform connecting watchmaking heritage, lifestyle, and sustainability. For Montblanc, led digital campaign strategy for the Summit smartwatch launch.
Co-founder and creative director of Seattle's grassroots design community — producing public installations, events, and experiences including Dante's Disco, a live cat tower group exhibition at the Museum of Museums, and large-scale inflatable installations at the Seattle Design Festival.
Editorial contributor and event producer for the Pacific Northwest's leading architecture and design publication. Writing includes Socially Dis-danced — an essay on the spatial politics of pandemic distancing and how public space holds (or fails) community — as well as the "Design Your World" youth program.
Angela explores the weird, the wonderful, the woah — capturing the energy and elegance of human forms in motion. A conversation between movement and meaning, where light, gesture, and space collide with synchronicity and absurdity. Experimenting to understand, pressing against the edges of disciplines, challenging the assumed. Morality, process, disruption — all shifting states. Not just to create, but to unsettle. To reimagine what existed before.
‘Release ya Wiggle’ as Beyoncé would say. Set of four cotton napkins embroidered with some weirdos feeling themselves and contributing to the no more paper towels revolution. Get it. #thislifeislikeadancefloor
Switching Positions. The 5 foundational positions of ballet rendered as sultry lacquered candlestick boots. Legs a flame for days. #thislifeislikeadancefloor
Drawing inspiration from John Baldessari — because I love being a smart-ass and wordplay. How this relates to dance? Not super linear — and maybe it doesn't have to be. Phrases told throughout barre or wearing new pointe shoes, catching that slippery-ass piece of Marley. There's always that one spot.
Rehearsal can be the death of you. Movement will save us all. Brand identity, posters, and merchandise for Poets of Gesture. #thislifeislikeadancefloor
Foraged from San Sebastián, a city in the Basque Autonomous Community within Spain, and bound in a black leather and metal choker — this one-of-a-kind piece is an emblem for the connection between BDSM and ballet. Both are about the fine line between pain and pleasure, and the beauty of discipline. #thislifeislikeadancefloor
Blanket forms. Dynamic registrations of bodies in motion and at rest. The irony is when I’m being loafy, I can pretend I’m still moving my (mostly) graceful, mobile body. #thislifeislikeadancefloor
It’s often preached, ‘You create your own reality,’ and that’s precisely what collage—the irrational juxtaposition or the bringing together of radically incompatible things—allows in an immediate, tangible way. Collage allows my mind to rearrange reality and explore the confines of ordinary things. This practice expands my thinking into other aspects of living, promoting reflective questions around ‘What can be?’, ‘Why not…?’, and ‘What if I…?’ #surrealism #handcut #collage #extraweird
Lights of Passage — Pointe shoes & mirrored tiles. I’ve lost count of the nights I’ve spent under a mirror ball—seeking solace, slipping into reverie, or finding myself there by chance. The dance floor has always meant something to me—be it the jewel-box-like ballet studio or the abyss of a nightclub. In this piece, I wanted to bring together my two worlds of dance, taking a pair of my rigid pointe shoes and transforming them into lightness through the application of mirrored tiles. The shoes, once symbols of discipline and endurance, become something else entirely—icons not to be suffered in, but to be worshipped under. They become a beacon of self-expression, guiding movement, music, and the endless moments of letting go. #thislifeislikeadancefloor
Reformed bunhead. Angela began dance at 13 at Michigan Classical Ballet, trained at Boston Ballet, The Kirov Academy, Burklyn Ballet Theatre, and Ballet Austin — and has performed with companies in Seattle, New York, and Hartford over a decade of professional work.
A boundless reservoir of all things poetic. I work at the intersection of research, strategy, and service design — planning and executing the work that uncovers user needs, pain points, and opportunities, then translating those findings into journeys, frameworks, and experiences that deliver on business goals. Insight and design as one discipline, not two.
I believe the best ideas live at the edge of disciplines — that a body in space knows things a spreadsheet never will, and that the most enduring brands are built on a kind of poetic logic: rigorous, felt, and impossible to copy.