Fueled by curiosity

I have 10 years of experience in design and frontend development. I’ve worked with various clients from small startup to large corporations, with areas of focus ranging from streaming/content creation, esports, banking, law, healthcare, document management, and more, locally and abroad.

I love designing apps that can make an impact to people's lives and working with highly-driven product teams.

A photo of Sam in kendo armor

A summary of my experience

  • A total of 10 years of experience in Product Strategy, UI, and UX for small startups and large corporations.
  • 2 years of which are experience in managing a design team, coaching and mentoring junior designers, and providing feedback.
  • Strong stakeholder management and communication.
  • Extensive experience in translating business strategies to product and design strategies.
  • Extensive experience in Design Thinking and facilitating Design Workshops.
  • A strict adherance to good design collaboration practices through Design Systems and Documentation.

Skillset

    Technical Skills

  • Visual Design
  • Product Thinking and Strategy
  • Prototyping
  • Design Systems
  • Accessibility
  • Interaction design
  • UI Development
  • Documentation
  • Usability Testing

    Tools of the Trade

  • Figma
  • CSS, Postcss, Sass
  • HTML, Haml, Pug
  • Eleventy
  • Vim
  • Can work around React, Gastby, Next.js, Ruby on Rails, and Elixir projects

Volunteering for the Tech Community

From the early years of my career up to now, I try to give back to the design and tech community, who I owe my foundations to.

manila css meetup attendees

Tambayan404

Tambayan404 is the biggest Discord community for Filipinos in Tech and general tech enthusiasts to have fun, unwind, and not take life seriously.

Co-founded together with Chi Señires and Richard Parayno, we aimed to create a community of people in tech PH that's a bit lax and where we can have a safe space to talk about various stuff like gaming, shitposting, personal wins, TILs, and more!

Screenshot of the Tambayan404 Discord Server

ManilaCSSHiatus

I founded ManilaCSS: aiming to promote CSS best practices, discover what's new, and gather professional and amateur developers to talk about anything under the CSS umbrella.

ManilaCSS was born 2017, after me and my colleague, Rico Sta. Cruz had a chance to attend MelbCSS in Australia and we thought “why not have this in Manila as well?” especially with all the fun things that’s happening right now with CSS!

manila css meetup attendees

Past affiliations

I also used to be an admin for Dribbble Philippines: Manila, a design community under Dribbble.com that aims to start conversations and make friends in the creative community through meetups and activities.

Another community I used to work with is Alchemists PH: An Elixir and Erlang community. Founded by my friend and colleague Ria Cataquian, Alchemists PH focuses on promoting Elixir and Erlang in the country.

dribbble and elixir meetup attendees

Collaborating

If there’s something I truly love about community work, it’s being able to collaborate with other tech and design communities and bring unique meetup experiences to everyone. If you want to collaborate with ManilaCSS in the future, please feel free to reach out.

community partners

Public Speaking

Part of how I contribute to the design and tech community besides organizing meetups, is to share my knowledge to other meetups and conferences.

Normally I would talk about interaction design, design systems, product design, CSS, SVG Animation, and some occasional career talks as well.

public speaking

Where I spoke

  • Google's Pride Conversations: Celebrating LGBTQ+ and allies in tech. Watch it on Youtube

    Organized by Google Philippines

  • Roots Podcast -- A Podcast on Filipino Designers. Listen to it on Spotify.

    Organized by Roots Podcast by Alexis Collado

  • SVG Animations - Junior Form Function and Class Conference 2019 @ De La Salle University

    Organized by Philippine Web Designers Organization

  • Panel - World IxD Day Manila 2018 @ Kalibrr HQ

    Organized by Kalibrr

  • CSS Variables - ManilaCSS Meetup 04 2018 @ Proudcloud HQ

    Organized by ManilaCSS

  • Setting up Design Systems - SOFTCON.ph 2017 @ SMX Convention Center

    Organized by The Philippines Software Industry Association

  • Panel - UXPH Conference 2017 @ Globe Tower

    Organized by User Experience Philippines

  • CSS 101 @ University of Santo Tomas

    Organized by SITE UST

  • Low fidelity Prototyping - UX University: Sixth Class @ Ateneo de Manila University

    Organized by UX Society Ateneo de Manila University

  • Building Design Systems - MiniFFC s2016e01 @ Bitspace

    Organized by Philippine Web Designers Organization

  • STI Career Talk @ STI Caloocan

    Organized by STI Caloocan

Interests and hobbies

My way to keep a healthy work-life balance is to do various hobbies that I enjoy and help me develop a healthy mind and body. I practice kendo (japanese fencing), cycling, building custom keyboards, playing the guitar, digital illustration, and playing video games!

I'm currently playing the critically-acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV so if you're there, don't hesitate to hit me up! ⚔️

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