I'm Emma.

I fell in love with computers before I understood what they were.

There's a scene in Home Alone 4 where the guy says "open sesame" and a bookcase spins open into a fully stocked bar. That scene lived rent-free in my head for years. A machine that listened. A house that responded. I was too young to fully understand what I was watching, but I knew I wanted to build something like that.

That fascination turned into a computer science degree, which turned into product design, which turned into the last four years of my life. I'm still fascinated. Machines still surprise me. The tools have changed (hello, AI), but the feeling is the same one I had watching that movie.

I design for AI and SaaS founders now, mostly. Founders building the kind of product where every screen has to earn its place. Sometimes I'm designing from scratch. Sometimes I'm redesigning what needs a fresh eye. Sometimes I'm finishing what someone else started.

Outside of work, I read a lot. Being lost in a book is a privilege I don't take lightly. I listen to Olivia Rodrigo more than is probably reasonable, she's topped my Spotify Wrapped four times now. The only year she didn't take the top spot was last year, when a German learning podcast beat her to it. I was shocked and a little pained (Olivia belongs at number one), but it also meant I'd spent way more time than I realised learning German. Which I'm learning, by the way.

I support Liverpool, which I never expected because I used to think football was a waste of time and money. Then I watched a match in 2017 (Salah was on the pitch) and I've been a Red ever since. #YNWA

I contribute to open-source when I can, and I volunteer with Areté, an NGO where we teach kids computer skills and how to code. Watching a child figure out that they can make a computer do something is the closest thing I've found to that "open sesame" feeling I chased as a kid.

I love my family. My siblings are annoyingly smart in their own directions. I love visiting new places, trying new things with my hands, and learning something I didn't know last week.