About me

My path to instructional design began in international classrooms spanning three continents. From tutoring political philosophy at Universiteit Maastricht to teaching English language to Italian executives and then at La Trobe University, I discovered that great learning experiences transcend cultural boundaries when built on sound pedagogical foundations.

For a decade, I refined my craft in Australian secondary education, eventually leading a humanities department of 30+ educators while coordinating school-wide social justice programs for 150+ students. But it was co-founding 3 Steps Away, a social justice education enterprise, that taught me how to scale learning solutions from concept to market, balancing educational impact with commercial sustainability.

In 2022, I formalized this expertise with a Graduate Certificate in Educational Design from Monash University, diving deep into learning theory, assessment design, and evidence-based instructional methods. That same year, I joined commercetools as an Instructional Designer, where I found the perfect convergence of my strategic leadership experience and passion for educational innovation.

At commercetools, I've been deeply involved in the strategic design and implementation of our firmwide digital learning platform from concept to deployment, scaling from 0 to 9 learning paths serving thousands of developers globally across three continents. I pioneered the integration of generative AI across our entire learning design lifecycle, increasing team efficiency by 60%—freeing 400+ hours annually that enabled us to double our learning path output. This required building cross-functional partnerships with Product, Engineering, and Customer Success leadership to align learning strategy with business priorities.

Beyond building content, I championed organizational AI adoption—mentoring colleagues in prompt engineering, establishing best practices, and demonstrating how AI can amplify instructional design expertise rather than replace it. This work positioned our team at the forefront of AI-enabled learning while maintaining pedagogical rigor.

The best learning experiences emerge when we combine pedagogical expertise with technological innovation and strategic business alignment. AI should amplify our ability to create personalized, Socratic learning journeys—not replace the instructional design thinking that makes education transformative. But innovation alone isn't enough; learning programs must demonstrably contribute to organizational objectives.

I approach every project through a dual lens: learning theory (How can we reduce cognitive load? Apply the Socratic method at scale? Create embodied experiences?) and business impact (How does this improve time-to-competency? Reduce support costs? Drive product adoption?). Whether designing conversational AI mentors or architecting modular curricula, I balance "how people learn" with "what outcomes matter to the organization."

After pioneering AI integration at commercetools—building systems that increased team efficiency by 60% and scaled our learning ecosystem to serve thousands globally—I've learned that sustainable learning innovation requires demonstrating ROI. My next chapter focuses on establishing comprehensive impact measurement frameworks from day one, connecting learning interventions to business KPIs like retention, productivity, and customer satisfaction.