I was full-on ready to be a full-time artist. And then I was invited to be a teacher at a summer institute in Denver, through the Native American Youth Outreach Program. I think it was seeing those kids connect to our traditional arts — part of our cultural inheritance that they had little exposure to before. It was seeing kids connect to our indigenous ways that changed me.

I first went into design because I’m a visual person. During school I worked on several short films, but ultimately learned design was more a hobby than a job for me. I started thinking about what I wanted to do instead.