I thought my life purpose
was to make people smile.

A good line. A clever thought.
Proof I could make the world feel lighter for a second.

But you can only chase smiles for so long before you accidentally end up in clown school, too. (True story.)

Somewhere between the puns and the truth, I realized people don’t laugh because you’re funny.

They laugh because they feel seen.

That flicker of recognition is the light I’ve been chasing ever since — in the awkward, the offbeat, the unseen. Because the things that make us human are often the things we’re taught to hide in the dark.

In everything I make, from 360 platforms for markets around the globe, to AI poetry films for the incorrigibly emo at heart, to mommy food blogs for the patriarchally isolated, to bold daily costumes for the quietly repressed—I try to break down that wall of shame and give people permission to be human.

Turns out, that’s the best way to make people smile.