After turning down an opportunity to continue running our small family farm, I set off to get a fine art degree. I could sense the skepticism in my dad’s response, but he was ultimately supportive. Shortly after finishing my degree, I got married and began my first professional job at a screen print shop. In between designing apparel, I worked to establish enough freelance work to jump off on my own. After freelancing for about a year and a half, a fun opportunity came up right as we moved from Loveland to Denver—I was recruited to art direct campaigns for The Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, and Colorado Rapids.
After another year and a half, I moved into tech. I started as a Sr. Designer at SendGrid, a Denver-based email API startup. I worked across all marketing touchpoints, including the website, events, campaigns, and even a rebrand. The new identity rollout came before the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange. During this time, my wife and I welcomed our first child into the world.
Not too much later, SendGrid was acquired by a San Francisco-based communication platform called Twilio. I grew into a larger role at Twilio and welcomed two more daughters to the mix during my tenure (I love being a girl dad!). I went from managing a team of two to a team of sixteen. The team was responsible for the Twilio brand, events, campaigns, video, photography, copywriting, and an overarching, company-supporting brand platform, filled with global vendors for our localization efforts. This was an incredible journey, but it was time to move on to something new.
DigitalOcean was the next stop on my career journey. They are a cloud infrastructure provider with a lively and vibrant brand. I stepped into a more focused web experience role. The team I manage is responsible for the brand, the overall digital experience across the marketing website, the community site, events, campaigns, and much more. The team has recently rolled out a thoughtful and efficient design system that’s empowering us to focus on other initiatives across the company.
“Evan is an incredibly humble and friendly designer. He never backs away from a challenge and his drive makes everyone around him better. He routinely provides resources of inspiration that has been a valuable asset to our product designers. Over his time at SendGrid, he has really has taken the the brand to a new level. We are lucky to have such a great person and designer on our team.”
"Evan stands out as one of our most valuable connections since our firm ventured into tech. Our paths crossed at both Twilio and DigitalOcean, and his creative skills have been key in our collaboration. Evan's guidance is consistently on the mark, and his skill in bridging communication across teams and vendors is a game-changer. His kindness allows him to ensure the well-being of both his team and vendors, while meeting deadlines and company objectives. He's been instrumental in our success in all of our joint projects."
