Emily is a character designer and self-proclaimed ’Burbs Girl® who grew up in southern California. As a toddler, she loved talking to new people. At stoplights, she used to stick her head out of the window to chat with the driver in the car over. Nightly story time with mom and frequent reminiscing from dad about that time he once “met some gnomes” while growing up in Mexico cemented her fate as a storyteller.

Her childhood passions were cartoons, dress-up, organizing her room, and Lunchables Pizza, in that order. She also nursed a fierce love for The Lord of the Rings, wearing one heck of a glow-in-the-dark Frodo shirt through the fourth grade. Stories were really her first means of exploring new, enchanted realms. Hey Arnold and The Wild Thornberries were her favorite TV shows and made her want to attend school on the east coast (or anywhere it snowed), as well as travel the world in an amphibious vehicle.

In high school, she joined show choir and used class projects as an opportunity to write academic, sketch-comedy jingles with her friends. In college (where it actually snowed), she studied art and joined a guild that played music in bell towers across Europe. It was during this time that she started traveling for real, and even though she wasn’t part of a fellowship undertaking peril and adventure to save the world from demonic jewelry, it was still pretty rad.

After graduating, some of her first professional work was illustrating kids’ books and doing graphic design for toy companies that empowered girls to pursue careers in STEM. In 2017, she changed gears to designing for political orgs that help elect women to office. But after a full presidential cycle designing for grownups, she decided that creating smart, educational, and empathetic stories for kids was the best contribution she could be making.

Her favorite types of content center on family and found family, children learning how to harness their superpowers and what it is that makes them different, and stories that help children (as well as grownups) work through difficult subjects like grief and loss. After all, her former art professor and mentor said it best: “We’re not making art, we’re making sense.”