The Quilling Scissors Taught Me What the Boardroom Couldn't
The Power of Refusing to Compress Yourself
People meet me as a technologist. A consultant. Someone who talks about AI governance and enterprise architecture for a living. What they don't usually see is the version of me sitting at my kitchen table at 9 p.m., carefully curling a strip of paper into a spiral for a quilling piece or standing in front of a half-finished acrylic mural, trying to decide if the color is right.
I've always needed to make things with my hands. Not because I have extra time—I never have extra time—but because there's a kind of thinking that only happens when your hands are busy and your mind is quiet. Painting, quilling, Cricut projects, and 3D printing—none of it pays the bills. All of it keeps me whole.
I think a lot of women in male-dominated fields learn to compress themselves. You learn which parts of yourself are "appropriate" to bring into the room and which parts you tuck away. For years, I didn't talk about the murals or the paper art in professional settings. It felt separate—like admitting I spend my weekends with a glue gun might undercut the version of me who sits across the table from executives.
I don't believe that anymore.
The same instinct that makes me good at my work—seeing a messy, chaotic problem and finding the structure hiding inside it—is the same instinct that makes me good at a mural. You start with nothing. You make a thousand small decisions. You step back constantly to see if the whole thing is actually working, not just the piece you're staring at. That's not two different skills. That's one skill wearing two different outfits.
Being a mother taught me something similar. Raising kids is the original lesson in building something you can't fully control, investing years in a process before you see the outcome, and loving the work even on the days it doesn't look like progress. I bring that patience into my consulting work more than any certification ever gave me.
And I volunteer at Mom's Market in Phoenix, not because it builds my résumé, but because showing up for other women—in whatever form that takes, whether it's a conversation, a connection, or a free weekend morning—is just who I am. It always has been.
If there's one thing I'd tell a younger version of myself, or any woman reading this who feels like she has to pick a lane—the architect or the artist, the executive or the mom, the serious professional or the person who still loves gluing tiny strips of paper into spirals—it's this: You don't have to pick. The parts of you that seem the least "professional" are often the ones doing the most work to make you good at everything else.
I'm not just a Chief AI Officer. I'm a mom. I'm an artist. I'm someone who still gets genuinely excited about a new 3D printing project at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday. All of it is me. None of it is extra.
