The Long Version

Our house is full of music. I'll often find my six-year-old daughter picking up one of my old guitars from the rack near my desk (one that she's allowed to play with) and strumming something that doesn't resemble any song I've ever heard. She doesn't care about tuning or time signatures. She just wants to make noise. I usually grab the Les Paul and we play together for a while. If you want to understand anything about how I ended up doing what I do, that scene is a reasonable place to start.

Because the thread that connects every chapter of my career, from punk bands in Ohio basements to leading design teams at companies you've heard of, is that I've always been the person who shows up to the room, picks up the instrument, and tries to figure out how to make something worth listening to. Sometimes literally.

Cleveland, and the Bands That Almost Were

I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, the kind of Northeast Ohio town where ambition meant figuring out how to leave. My father was working class. He fixed things himself before calling anyone, and he expected his three sons to do the same. That planted something in me that I didn't have language for until much later: an instinct for solving problems independently, a respect for hard work, and a reflex for getting back up after getting knocked down. Both of my parents expected a lot out of us, but it was a loving household. Those values, the ones you absorb before you're old enough to name them, still run underneath everything I do professionally.

While in high school, I became close with the Mothersbaugh family of Devo (opens in new tab) fame and started to believe that music could carry me beyond Ohio. I spent my latter high school years and college playing in punk and rock bands, working factory night shifts to pay tuition and spending weekends traveling around the state to play shows for anyone who would listen.

During college, I became close friends with the members of Relient K (opens in new tab), a band from the same area that was starting to break out. One afternoon, I asked Matt Thiessen, their lead singer, why he thought people liked Relient K so much more than my band. His answer was simple: “When I write songs, I try to think about what people want to listen to.” That was a gut punch. I had been pouring my energy into writing the most technically complicated songs I was capable of, which is a thing twenty-year-olds do when they confuse difficulty with quality. That reframing, from “what can I make?” to “what do people actually need?”, became permanent. It's the same instinct I bring to design and product leadership today.

I started The Kelly Kapowskis, an emo punk quartet, at the start of 2000. After a couple of mediocre early shows in Pennsylvania, we got the chance to open for Relient K at the release show for their first label album. Everything connected that night. The crowd was in it, the songs landed, and afterward, the producer of Relient K's first album offered to produce a demo for us and help shop it to labels.

We spent that summer playing every show and festival we could, then recorded a five-song demo called Always Watching (opens in new tab). By the end of the summer, record labels were reaching out. Most wanted to hear another five to seven songs in the same vein, so I dropped out of college to focus on writing with the band. By the end of the year, the band had imploded. Our drummer eventually joined Relient K, which is one of those facts that's either devastating or funny depending on how much time has passed. Enough time has passed.

Nashville, and the Accidental Design Career

Devastated by the missed opportunity, I tried to get other music projects off the ground with little success. I was still working at the factory, and during that stretch I started picking up design magazines and became fascinated with the field. Growing up in suburban Ohio, I didn't have much exposure to design as a discipline, but I could see a path. In 2002, I moved to Nashville. The music industry connections from my band days gave me an opening at an artist management company. They managed Relient K, among many others, and even managed Katy Perry before she became “Katy Perry.”

At the management company, I picked up whatever work was handed to me. When they launched a merchandise division, I proposed an idea for an online marketplace: centralized inventory with each band getting its own consumer-facing store. The idea was approved, the product launched in November 2003, and orders poured in so fast that I was working long hours and occasionally sleeping at the office to keep up with holiday sales. Not glamorous, but it was the first time I'd seen something I conceived go from idea to shipped product. That feeling never gets old.

In 2005, I left the company after discovering the owner wasn't treating the artists right. A startup that was supposed to follow fell through when the investment didn't materialize. I was broke. Genuinely, skip-a-few-meals broke. But I had a roster of musicians who trusted me and knowledge of how to help them monetize their brands. I took a bartending job at a local wine bar to generate cash and launched two businesses: LaCroix Merchandising and LaCroix Design Co. (opens in new tab) Out of necessity (not having extra cash to pay designers), I started doing the design work myself. I went on to design and produce merchandise lines for Relient K, Maroon 5, Switchfoot, Anberlin, and many more.

While primarily working as an illustrator across 2005 and 2006, I started studying the foundations of graphic design. Paul Rand, Saul Bass, Milton Glaser, Michael Bierut. I joined AIGA (opens in new tab), read everything I could get my hands on, and started building websites to showcase my work. Whenever business slowed, I'd rebuild my own site, exploring new ideas for the web. Those personal projects led to more commissions, which evolved from illustration and identity work into full website builds.

By 2009, I found myself in over my head on a complex WordPress site with custom PHP plugins and a looming deadline. I was desperately coding through the night when my brother Michael recognized the predicament and offered to help over the weekend. By Sunday, he had everything working. When I asked how, he explained the solution. When I said “I didn't know you knew how to do that,” his response was, “I didn't. I read about it over the weekend.” I asked Michael to work with me shortly after that. We made a great team. Not a bad outcome for a college dropout, either: I was offered the opportunity to teach design at a local university that same year.

Twitter

In May 2016, I joined the design team at Twitter (opens in new tab) working on advertiser experiences and moved to San Francisco. Michael eventually joined Twitter's engineering team as well. I dug into the complex world of advertising tooling and quickly became known for product thinking, technical aptitude, and a willingness to take on whatever the team needed most. Over nearly seven years, I progressed from Product Designer II to Senior Product Design Manager overseeing the entirety of Twitter's Ads Business design team.

The work I'm most proud of from that period wasn't any single product launch. It was transforming the design function from a team that responded to requests from Product and Engineering into one that actively drove product direction. I spearheaded a vision project that had over half of its sixty-five proposed concepts incorporated into product roadmaps. I led the team through the pandemic with no performance-based attrition. I hired and developed designers who went on to become managers themselves.

On October 27, 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter. By November 4, he had laid off my team and me. That happened to be the day after a committee approved my promotion to Director. I took time off to focus on my wife Rachel and our daughter while I figured out what came next.

Now

In October 2023, I joined Braze (opens in new tab) as Director of Product Design, leading teams across the Data and Orchestration divisions. In practice, that means our teams design the systems that help brands figure out what to say to their customers, when to say it, and how to make it actually useful. Most of my energy goes toward making complex products feel simple, coaching designers who genuinely want to be great at this, and making sure Design has a real voice in product strategy.

Rachel and I have been together since 2005, married since 2010. Our daughter was born in February 2020, and fatherhood has been more rewarding than I expected. Losing my own father made me more aware of a father's impact on their child's life. I hope to raise a strong-willed girl who cares for others and feels confident exploring her creativity. We love taking her to experience new things, whether it's a restaurant we've been wanting to try, an overseas trip, or a concert. If it's an all-ages show, she's there.

We live in Logan Square, on the northwest side of Chicago. It's home. On weekends, you'll find us at our local favorites, taking in whatever the city has to offer.

The Other Stuff

I'm a Nottingham Forest (opens in new tab) supporter, which is one of those identity-level commitments that defies rational explanation. I try to make it back to the City Ground (opens in new tab) each year, and the annual trip to the East Midlands has introduced me to Wire Works Whiskey from White Peak Distillery, which is sort of the best possible side effect of a football habit. I follow the Premier League and European competitions closely, and I'm always happy to talk tactics with anyone who will listen.

I started playing guitar again regularly after my daughter was born because I want her to know that side of my life. These days, I rotate between a British Racing Green Les Paul Standard 60s, a Gibson SJ-200, a Fender Telecaster Deluxe, and a 1979 Gibson “The Paul” that has no business sounding as good as it does. My desk doubles as a small studio where I can track guitars whenever the mood strikes, which is one of the better perks of working from home.

Having spent time working in restaurants and bars early in my career, Rachel and I love dining out, whether we're exploring the restaurants in Chicago or discovering something new on our travels. I enjoy the craft of cooking at home, too. You'll often find me exploring new techniques, trying new cuisines, and working on my knife skills. Music is still a constant. I collect vinyl records, I never miss an opportunity to see Jimmy Eat World (opens in new tab), and after catching the Oasis reunion tour in the summer of 2025, I won't miss seeing them again if I can help it. Some of my other favorites include The National, The Menzingers, Fontaines D.C., The Clash, The Smiths, American Football, and Bruce Springsteen.

We travel as a family as much as we can. London is always the answer when someone asks where we should go, and our favorite way to see a new city is to pick a neighborhood and live in it for a while. It's the same instinct that drives how I approach design, honestly. You have to spend time in the space to understand what it needs. And if you're lucky, you realize you've been there for an hour and don't want to leave.