Before any of this had a name, I was the kid drawing on whatever was in reach: notebooks, the backs of worksheets, anything flat. Art and craft was the one class I never wanted to end.

I didn't know design was a job. I just liked making things look the way they felt in my head, and cutting and gluing until they did.

After my SEE exams in 10th grade, my brother suggested a graphic design course. That's where I first opened the tools, and where drawing turned into something I could do on a screen.

Then studies took over. The course ended, the files sat untouched, and for about two years I forgot design was something I'd ever done.

COVID shut everything down and left me with time and nothing to fill it. I was starting a BBA in Marketing, and on the side I tried learning to code, because tech had always pulled at me too.

Code taught me how products actually get built. It also taught me it wasn't my strongest skill. So I went back to what I already loved and asked how I could use it to make something meaningful.

Marketing taught me to write for people and to check whether it worked. I worked as a digital marketer and a junior copywriter, writing the words and running Meta ads, then watching which ones people actually clicked.

The biggest of those was the political campaign for Pukar Bam of the Rastriya Swatantra Party. Real deadlines, real stakes, and a lot of people to reach with no room for a message that didn't land.

A bit of research led me to product design, and it clicked straight away. It's the one job that uses everything I'd picked up: the drawing, the marketing brain and the curiosity about tech.

Now I design dashboards, tools and design systems for startups and scale-ups. Products with a lot going on, made to feel obvious to the people using them.