How a CSM became
an app developer.
Ten years understanding customers.
My career has always been in client facing-roles, managing relationships with high-value clients. I learned early that the gap between what software promises and what customers actually experience is where almost everything important happens.
That experience carried through to SPS Commerce, where I've spent the last four years as a Senior Customer Success Manager in the enterprise retail supply chain space. I've gotten good at one thing above all: understanding what people actually need from the tools they use.
Then I started building things.
In 2025 I taught myself Swift and shipped Pub Mate — a simple iOS app for finding real pubs. It wasn't a grand vision. It was a simple problem to solve, a tool I wanted, and a challenge I set for myself.
It worked. And it changed how I thought about my career. I wasn't just someone who understood what users needed, I was someone who could build for it. That realization became Howl & Hearth Studio, founded in November 2025.
The TEDx chapter.
Four years ago I started volunteering with TEDxMinneapolis. What began as a way to get more involved in the Minneapolis ideas community became a real leadership role...Board Secretary, Volunteer Coordinator of a team of 30, and eventually Speaker Coach.
The TEDxMinneapolis app is the intersection of all of it: a project I care about deeply, for an event I've helped build, using skills I've spent years developing. It launches Summer 2026.
What I'm building toward.
I'm at an interesting crossroads...deep enough in customer success to be genuinely useful, technical enough to build real things, and curious enough to keep learning. The studio is where those threads come together.
I use AI tools heavily in my development work. Not as a shortcut, but as a force multiplier that lets a solo developer punch well above their weight. Every project at Howl & Hearth is something I'd want to use myself.