Howdy, I’m Trystan! I didn’t intend to become an engineer. A car accident and half a decade of recovery derailed my professional-jazz-guitarist plans, so I followed the scent of 401(k)s and health insurance to software engineering. It turns out I loved it.

Once I arrived, I pushed my career at a pace most people reserve for emergencies, moving from intern to managing multiple teams in a few years, driven by an insatiable desire to eliminate frustration and make every day a little better for the people I worked with and the customers we served.

I believe interpersonal connection and creativity are two of the most valuable things we have as humans, so it confounds me that so much tech dulls those edges instead of sharpening them.

That frustration led to a fateful Monday where I quit my job and entered monetary freefall, dead-set on building technology that brings people together and gives them their voices back. And thus HyperGrounded Inc. was born, to make the future human-shaped, collaborative, and a whole lot more fun.

As the Brand and UX/UI designer at HyperGrounded, I am responsible for the visual language that supports our mission to amplify humanity.

I am equal parts designer, marketer, and ankle grabber when the team drifts off into techno-poetry. I believe design should be an act of care, not a spectacle. It is, to me, empathy made visible and how we honor one of our most finite and sought after resources, human attention.

Beyond the screen, I build a small, lively world in Denver, CO with my husband Trystan, our soon-to-arrive son Mikko, our dear family, and our fountain-loving cat, Garlic.