My journey in design began in 2019, when I volunteered as a UX/UI designer for local NGOs in Ukraine, where I'm from. Wanting a deeper understanding of how products truly come together, I spent 6 months in beast-mode learning to code. This led to my first role at a mental health startup, where I led product design while driving frontend development. There, I helped scale a bootstrapped MVP to 10 paid customers totaling $12k MRR and raise a $150k angel round.

Next, I joined a VR startup, where I led the product design process end-to-end—from research and prototyping user flows to building interfaces. By streamlining design-to-dev handoff with cleaner component libraries, clearer specs, and tighter feedback loops, I reduced development time by 40%.

In April 2025, I co-founded Gist — an app that curates IRL experiences and uses AI agents for post-event follow-ups and planning. In 4 months, we scaled to a community of 3k Gisters, achieved 22% retention, and brought in users at a $0.40 CAC.

At the brink of raising our first round, my co-founder and I had a fallout. The experience taught me the importance of deeply knowing your co-founder before committing, the priority of distribution and GTM over building in early stages, and that I can handle the realities of building a company from the ground up. That founder mindset now stays with me wherever I go.

For the past 6 months, I've worked as Product Design Lead at an AI fitness coach startup on a contract basis, helping lift retention to 34% over 14 days. Next, I'm looking to join a small, ambitious, fast-moving seed to Series A team as a full-time product designer.

I'm especially drawn to healthcare, consumer services, and design tools. I bring product thinking and a founder's mindset — ownership, speed, and adaptability — to everything I take on.