about

I was born in a Michigan blizzard in January, and fell for design as a teenager through Andy Warhol’s expressive work on Interview magazine. At California College of the Arts I studied graphic and industrial design, where the Aeron chair and OXO’s peeler showed me what research, craft, and rigor in iteration make possible: form and function to equal measures of excellence, every detail earning its place by making someone’s life better.

My early career ran through publication design (including *surface and Wired), and packaging design and art direction for action sports companies. In 2004 a fluke gig in digital was supposed to be take-the-money-and-run. Instead, I found my people.

Since then: Yahoo! in the Web 2.0 era, contributing to one of the industry’s first design systems. Enterprise consulting with Adobe. A YCombinator-backed nonprofit of my own. Several years spent in public interest tech with SecureDrop, Mozilla, Tor, and California’s DMV. Platform design for infrastructure at Cloudflare and HashiCorp. Twenty years in, the throughline is unchanged: complex systems, high stakes, and the people who deserve better from both.

I live with my partner and two mischievous cats on a Christmas tree farm at the base of Mt Hood, in semi-rural Oregon. My pronouns are she/her. My favorite thing in the whole wide world, is still snow.

On my mind: art, architecture, AI ethics, co-active leadership, service ecosystems, interaction design, typography; music, weightlifting, canning, metalworking, blacksmithing, letterpress posters, letterpress printing, Zebra unity, epic powder days. Maybe (possibly) just a few other things, too.

ninavizz is my universal handle, as well as my gmail. My public PGP key is advised for sensitive matters.

…let’s ride!