Born in New Orleans.
Built in Austin.
I don't fit in a box — and I stopped trying. I have my own ecosystem: design, strategy, technology, storytelling, advocacy. Each part feeds the others.
When I think of home, I think of beignets from Café du Monde — powdered sugar, hot coffee, the Mississippi a block away. New Orleans taught me that everything worth doing has soul behind it.
The Gulf Coast has a way of teaching you that things fall apart and get rebuilt. Austin is where the career took shape — and where the work became a system.
Good design is a principle,
not a deliverable.
The warrior character and the shield represent my convergence of design and technology. UX Design Warrior was built around one belief — that standing on good design means holding that standard even when no one is watching.
A2Symmetry
Symmetry means balance.
Balance is not optional.
A2Symmetry was created to advocate for inclusive, accessible design. Access to symmetry — because every user deserves the same experience, regardless of ability.
To keep my work consistent and intentional, I created CDP — Cara's Design Protocol — a personal framework that governs every design decision I make. And to evaluate websites as interconnected systems rather than isolated pages, I built CEWQI — Cara's Extensive Web Quality Index.
These aren't tools I picked up. They're frameworks I built because nothing else existed that worked the way I think.
The Making of Queen Pelican
The Gulf Changes Everything
The Deepwater Horizon disaster hit differently when you're from Louisiana. Watching oil coat the brown pelican — the state bird — made the crisis feel personal. It pushed me to ask: what if the products we use every day didn't carry this cost?
The Inspiration for Eco-Cleaning
Port Fourchon. The cleanup. The images were impossible to look away from. The brown pelican is more than a symbol — it's a reminder of what's at stake when design and commerce ignore their impact on the world.
A Brand Takes Shape
Queen Pelican began as an idea for eco-friendly household and cleaning products — alternatives safer for homes and better for the environment. The pelican became the mascot: a symbol of resilience and conscious choice. The brand existed before UX had a name for what I was doing.
Structure Before the Tools
The first flows came from instinct — hand-drawn, rough, and already thinking about how users would move through an experience. Architecture and drafting precision showing up long before I had the vocabulary to call it information architecture.
The Capstone Didn't Create It
When I entered UX, I didn't invent a fictional product for my capstone. I used Queen Pelican — a concept already years in the making. The program gave it research methods, personas, and usability testing. It gave structure to something that already had soul.
A Video Before There Was a Playbook
Early on, I produced a 2D animated video to explain what UX Design actually means — because most people had no idea. I scripted it, designed the characters, composed the music, and edited it myself. It wasn't an assignment. It was a gap I saw and filled.
Some ideas are worth staying with.
Queen Pelican is one of them.