About
The Quick Version.
I'm a product designer with eight years of experience, currently at MasteryPrep, where I specialize in EdTech: front-end UI, user research, and design systems that actually live in a repo, not just a slide. I also edit videos for Fungi Marketing. Curiosity is what landed me here, and EdTech keeps me learning every day.
Outside of work I run Dawson Creative Studio, where I’m always experimenting. I print on clothing and products, I 3D print, I make custom carpets and tables, and I create content online. I also really enjoy making small things like magnets and tiny objects, which is funny for someone who’s 6’3”.
The Long Version
I was always an artist.
Growing up, my mother always said I was going to be an engineer. I was, in fact, an artist. Now I do both.
For as long as I can remember I was doodling in my notebooks, running coloring contests with my family, and watching How It's Made and Unwrapped with my grandfather. Two things shaped that early artistry more than anything else: Kid Pix and Amelia's Notebook by Marissa Moss.
Two places, two sets of expectations.
Moving between North Carolina and New York meant moving between two school systems that expected very different things, and nobody tells you when the expectations change. I learned that the hard way.
When I moved to New York City my freshman year, I plagiarized a paper. My school made a big deal out of it, and they were right to. But I wasn’t trying to get away with something — it was the first paper I’d ever been asked to write from a book, and I didn’t know how to say that out loud. So I got caught, I got embarrassed, and then I learned. That’s what it took to get me on a curve everyone assumed I was already on.
Why EdTech.
I walked into Barry University undecided. All I knew was that I wanted to do something I loved, and that I loved figuring out how things work. So I followed my curiosity, and it led me to design. Critiquing, giving feedback, arranging things until they clicked: it came naturally, and it gave me a kind of control I loved.
That curiosity turned into work. As a lab monitor, I handled tech and print requests for students and faculty. As a work-study instructional designer for Barry’s PACE program, I moved professors’ courses out of stacks of PDFs and into Canvas as they went remote. Barry even had me test how Canvas should be navigated, because who knows a learning platform better than the student using it? I was doing e-learning design before I had a name for it.
That’s why I’m in EdTech. It’s a space where everyone is supposed to be learning: students, the teachers who teach them, and the people who lead those teachers. Mistakes aren’t the end of the story; they’re part of the process. I learned that the hard way in high school, and it’s exactly why this space feels like home. It’s my stomping ground.
Education.
I earned my BFA in Graphic Design from Barry University’s Fine Arts program, which is where I found my love for branding and design.
I earned my MS in UX/UI Interaction Design from Touro University, where I learned how to turn my design skills into scalable design systems.
Teaching Design.
I started my teaching career as a special education teacher at Success Academy, then went on to teach graphic design and intro computer science at Urban Assembly Comp Sci High Charter School. That was the first time I taught something I was passionate about, and the first time I had to find the line between what students needed and what I thought was cool for them to know.
That's where I learned the work — not the material, the work. Building a lesson is the easy part. I was designing for students with IEPs and every kind of need in one room, with fidelity, and producing materials a student had to be able to use without me standing next to them. That's where my understanding of and empathy for student users came from. It's why my design decisions in EdTech come from working directly with students.
Click to view a sample of the curriculum I built.
The studio.
Dawson Creative Studio is where my fine arts side keeps working: branding, apparel, print, and physical goods. I take on freelance projects for businesses and individuals, from shirt designs to print-ready specs. If you have an idea, I'd love to help make it real.
Where I am now.
At MasteryPrep, I’m a product designer on the LMS authoring platform behind our cirrculum products. I manage our library of figure assets, engineer internal tools that speed up product development, like the Figure Creation Tool, and help build the design system the platform runs on. My work spans UX/UI design and contributing directly to the product’s source code.
At Fungi Marketing, I'm a video editor. I create social media content for their clients, from Reels to commercial ads.
A lot of what I do today is building AI-assisted workflows that unclog the pipeline, so teams spend less time on busywork and more time on the work that matters.
My philosophy is simple: you have the sauce, I help bottle it. The best design systems work like a good recipe that anyone on the team can follow, even when I'm not in the room.