Seeds of My Story

I am a researcher, archivist, and designer interested in how memory is created, preserved, and accessed across physical and digital spaces. My work explores archives, accessibility, visual culture, and the systems that shape what communities remember — and what they risk losing.

Photography first taught me how to see. What began as documentation became a practice of noticing what is overlooked and asking questions about whose stories are preserved, whose histories remain visible, and how people leave traces of themselves in the world. That curiosity eventually led me to archives, information studies, and research focused on the relationship between memory, place, and access.

As an MLIS graduate student at San José State University, I study how information systems organize knowledge and influence collective understanding. I am particularly interested in archives as living spaces of interpretation rather than neutral repositories. Whether I am conducting archival research, documenting cultural landscapes, exploring digital preservation, or designing information experiences, I approach this work with an awareness that systems reflect values, priorities, and power.

My commitment to accessibility is personal. My father, who is blind, built systems that worked for him long before screen readers became commonplace. Watching him navigate the world taught me that access is not charity — it is design. When I faced the possibility of losing my own vision as a teenager, that lesson deepened and reshaped how I think about perception, technology, and participation.

Across my research and creative practice, I am drawn to questions of preservation, belonging, and public memory. My current interests include community archives, cultural heritage, archival storytelling, and the documentation of street art and other ephemeral forms of expression. I am fascinated by how communities record themselves outside formal institutions and how those records can be preserved without losing their context, meaning, or humanity.

The Archive Garden is where these interests converge. Part portfolio, part research space, and part evolving archive, it gathers projects that explore memory, accessibility, preservation, and the many ways people create meaning across time.