Hello!
I’m Maren (pronounced “MAHR-en”) — a UX designer based in Silicon Valley with a strong foundation in visual design.
My journey is a little different from most. I was born in Minnesota and grew up in the United Arab Emirates and Brazil. After graduating from Wellesley College with a degree in Studio Art and Russian Area Studies, I moved to Moscow with dreams of someday becoming a designer. Fast forward a few years of teaching and translating, I landed my first graphic design job at a bilingual HR firm. I enjoyed my work as a designer so much that I returned to the United States to enroll in Massachusetts College of Art and Design’s Certificate in Graphic Design Program.
Since then I’ve had the honor of working for a wide range of companies such as Harvard Business School, Bai, MathWorks, and Intuit.
Never shying away from adventure, in May 2017 my husband and I moved from Boston to San Mateo, California for my husband’s new job at an energy startup. Excited to be living in Silicon Valley and wanting to develop user-centric apps and websites, I enrolled in UX Academy Designlab’s user experience program. The user research part of the program has been eye opening for me. It has helped me give meaning and purpose to the things I design, and has taken my creativity and potential to a whole new level.