Hi there! I'm Jen.

I'm an entrepreneur (always), designer (BFA), filmmaker (MFA) and forever curious.

Currently, I’m the founder and ceo of a bootstrapped startup, TRY Studio and passionate home cook . While my endeavors often span mediums the venn diagram always includes leadership and creative circles. HyperCalm was my first company; a web design shop when Flash was a thing. I've won a Directors Guild of America award for a short film I wrote and directed, successfully funded a Kickstarter short, run the world's largest scriptwriting contest, and was the lead designer and project manager at a company that specialized in beautiful work for nonprofits.

* Entrepreneur *

TRY Studio : Founder & CEO (2016 - present) :: is an online application to connect locals for one-on-one lessons in all things creative. Bootstrapped and built code-free (via Bubble and Webflow), I wore many hats, pulling from skills as a designer, filmmaker, and project manager.

As founder and CEO, I did continuous research on the landscape TRY Studio was living within in order to steer and grow the company. I cultivated relationships with local businesses and artists to build community and comradery. Working with the teachers, I helped them create lesson plans, coached them on how to guide their students towards individual success, and how to present their work as an expert artist.

As designer/developer, I created it all from the pre launch website, through the many in-person event experiences and related collateral, and the fully functional platform design/build with all its many iterations.
View design portfolio

‍HyperCalm : Founder & Designer (2001 - 2012) :: Working as a designer and business advisor, I led small and medium sized businesses through the design, build, and ongoing support of their websites. Over the years, the platforms and tools changed but the heart of what I did remained constant: build beautiful, effective, and efficient websites that support a company’s mission.

‍Kiwi Vine Design : Founder & Designer (2007) :: While short lived, this was an idea akin to an early SquareSpace for actors. I found that many actors wanted to hire HyperCalm but couldn’t fully invest, so I created and launched an online tool which was a blend of templates and personalized design. Here's a blast from the past.

[ Lead Designer & Project Manager ]

Giant Rabbit : Lead Designer & Project Manager (2012 - 2016) :: As an early employee of Giant Rabbit, my time was ever-changing, moving from solo designer to crafting the design department as well as working to cultivate company culture / onboard new designers and project managers.

As Giant Rabbit grew, I ran our weekly company-wide meetings, worked to develop our hiring and on-boarding strategies, and mentored new designers and project managers.

As Lead Designer, I created websites and digital experiences with my team for some of the most impactful nonprofits in the Bay Area and beyond. My role allowed me to engage with everything in the lifecycle of design from color palette and fonts to content mapping and user engagement strategy. I interfaced with our team of in-house developers, developed priority queues, and bridged the conversation between design/development and our clients.

< Program Director >

Script Frenzy : Program Director (2008 - 2010) :: Script Frenzy was a free, month-long, online scriptwriting challenge created by the team who created widely successful National Novel Writing Month. I participated in their pilot program and before the month was out found myself asking to run the following year’s event.

Over the next three years, with a limited budget, and only working a few months a year, I grew the event from 8,000 participants to over 25,000.

I created resourced for new screenwriters, worked with our team to develop programs for our young writer scriptwriting program, built community through in-person and online events, wrote pep talks, cultivated relationships with professional scriptwriters and worked with them to build educational and inspiring content for new and seasoned writers alike.

( Filmmaker )

Producer/Director : (2005 - current) :: Produced films and videos with running times from 3-minutes to feature length. Worked with department heads to establish production needs and goals and creative boundaries to work within. Created and coordinated personnel schedules and locations, interfaced with external entities (e.g., city planning, local law enforcement), established budgets, and managed needs of all departments in pre-production, production, post-production, and distribution.

View partial credits

Check out my work

Design Film