My name is Don, pronounced  /’dahn/.

It’s not short for Donald as most people assume.  Just immigrating from South Korea, I got my name during second grade in elementary school.  As you might recall teachers tend to take roll call during class for attendance. Whereas the teacher would call your name, and you reply “here”. So as you have it my given first name is “Dong” which is “동” in Korean. 

Needless to say, every time when my name was called an outburst of laugher came out from the students. After the first week of school, my name was changed to “Don” by my second-grade teacher.  She dropped the “g” in my name and started calling me “Don”.  Since then that has been my name to most if not all the people that know me except my parents.  

For my second grade teacher, It was a simple task of removing the “g” from my given name to control a rowdy bunch of seven and eight years olds.  However, that simple change has impacted my life in profound ways that could not be measured.

Yes, my name is Don.

I am a user experience designer at heart that applies design theories to all aspects of the product creation process.  As an accomplished leader with 15+ years of experience providing creative direction and exercising holistic thinking across diverse product releases and platforms.  

I wear many hats during a project, product owner, UX designer, design strategist, project manager, and technical development lead. As a cross-functional leader, I love impacting my co-workers as my second-grade teacher impacted me.  Educating and empowering others has become a cornerstone in my approach to leadership.  

When I am not dreaming up new products I enjoy personal training others, being a nutritionist, going to track days, trying to be a DYI mechanic, and a pc enthusiast.

Cross-functional leader x dreamer of products