¡Hola, qué gusto verte! 🇲🇽

I'm Karla, born and raised in Texas, and proud of my rich Mexican heritage! 

As a teacher, I learned to explain complex ideas and ask thoughtful questions to uncover my students' needs. This skill became invaluable when planning lessons using EdTech platforms. I fell in love with the intricacies of these interfaces and marveled at how they connected with my students.

Watching them interact with the platforms—solving problems and demonstrating their strategies with just a tap or click—sparked my curiosity. I began to wonder who designed these experiences. How can I create the same sense of delight and joy for others? Curious to learn more, I asked my sister—a talented software engineer—the same questions. She introduced me to UX design and as she described the day-to-day life of a designer in tech, I was hooked! 

I enrolled in DesignLab to learn design foundations and Figma—the Swiss Army knife of my design toolkit, bringing my ideas to life, one pixel at a time! Then, I earned my Master's in Human-Computer Interaction at Georgia Tech (Go Jackets 🐝). In Atlanta, I worked alongside vibrant multidisciplinary teammates who sharpened my eye for design 👀  Drawing on my education degree from the University of Houston (Go Coogs 🐾) I became a Graduate Teaching Assistant for Dr. DiSalvo, polishing giving design feedback to students.

I landed on the big cheese when I got my internship for Roche, a Swiss healthcare company, where I developed scalable systems and contributed to user research and design systems and data visualizations. In my final year, I collaborated with the Children's Museum of Atlanta as the lead UX Researcher for a year. My team re-imagined "Pick A Seed," a digital interactive that explores plant growth. With many iterations later, my team sprouted success, earning the "Most Outstanding Project" award for 2024! 🌱✨

My Journey