Hi! I'm Angela, Co-Founder of Needl, a YC-backed generative AI search platform. Previously, I drove collaboration among cross-functional teams to design and build ML products at Microsoft and before that, I founded and ran a design agency (more below). From the doodles that covered the walls of my childhood room to the wireframes that fill my computer screen today— I've always loved creating things.

I'm fascinated by how we can leverage the natural tension between design and eng to build impactful things, and am particularly interested in designing intuitive ML solutions for everyday problems— which is precisely why I founded Needl, a new way to search that's both unified and intelligent. And at Microsoft, I shipped various ML training and deployment products. From as early as my 18 y/o-self's design studio work to more recent work leading AI R&D initiatives— I’ve honed in on building human-centered ML experiences. I build for customers humans.

Before my big tech ventures, I conducted HCI research in the adversarial ML space to defend against deepfakes, scaled out design at the Data Science Institute as the founding designer, and organized local hackathons in Chicago and Seattle. And before that, I founded and ran a design studio for many years.

When I'm not on Figma or VS Code, you can probably find me exploring the city on 35mm, raving about the Frye’s latest exhibit, or baking a little too much.