Building With Intention: What Horses, Motherhood, Design and AI Taught Me About Growth

I did not arrive here in a straight line. I came by way of curiosity, reinvention, and a deep need to create meaning in the spaces between who I was and who I was becoming.

Before I became a founder, I immersed myself in design — studying fashion, interiors, and later shaping my work in the digital world. Even back then, what fascinated me was not just aesthetics. It was transformation. I wanted to understand how ideas become visible, how identity becomes presence, and how design becomes a bridge between intention and experience.

From Art School to Digital Strategy: Learning to Build With Intention

I went to art school to become a designer, but even while studying fashion and interiors, I kept my eyes on the digital world. I could feel what was coming, that the future of creativity, business, and communication would live online.

That belief shaped everything that came next, the way I worked, the clients I took on, and the decision to build my first company, 15 Hands Media, a boutique web design and strategy studio. For years, I helped founders, brands, and creatives turn their ideas into digital spaces that could be seen, felt, and trusted.

15 Hands Media (@15handsmedia) was not just a service business. It was my foundation. It taught me how people show up online, how trust is built and how it is lost, and how identity either becomes clear or gets swallowed by noise. We still serve legacy clients and select projects to this day.

Where Design Became Direction

Before AI went mainstream, I was already learning everything I could. I spent years training, experimenting, researching, and certifying myself in emerging tools. I took the time to understand both the technology and its human cost: what it could give, what it could hollow out, what it could redefine. And I kept building.

That work, layered with years of design and strategy, became the groundwork for my next chapter: Lavatr.ai. (@lavatr.ai)

Lavatr.ai was built at the intersection of design, psychology, AI strategy, and machine intelligence. It is not “AI content.” It is identity architecture.

That work is not mine alone. My husband — my partner in both life and business — brings more than 25 years of experience in marketing, leadership, and strategic alliances. He’s the steady force behind the scenes, the person I trust most in the rooms where vision has to meet execution.

Lavatr is rooted in the same belief that began in the art studio: identity matters. Trust matters. Presence matters. But now, I build with different instruments. Twin avatars. Intelligent workflows. Digital Profile Briefs. Systems that help people scale who they are, without losing their voice or their emotional truth.

“What if technology could help us show up more fully as ourselves?”

And somewhere in the middle of all of this, I became a mother.

Motherhood: The Root of My Becoming

Motherhood slowed me down and sharpened me at the same time. It made the work more meaningful. It deepened my why. My son is my favorite role, my soft place, and my driving force.

The reminder that legacy is not content, or revenue, or visibility. It is the life we build in front of the people we love.

How Equestrian Life Shaped My Standards

Another anchor in my life has always been my animals, especially my horses and my German Shepherds. My equestrian journey is not separate from my work. It is part of what keeps me grounded and honest. Horses require clarity, consistency, and presence. They mirror who you are without a single word.

The hard work of equestrianism, the early mornings, the discipline, the self-promise to keep improving, has taught me as much about leadership and resilience as any business experience. Living my childhood dream with my horses is a daily reminder that the things we once imagined can become real when we are willing to work in alignment with our heart, our mind, and our skills, and when we keep learning and challenging ourselves beyond our comfort zone.

Growth, for me, has never been just about scaling a business. It has been about becoming someone I recognize. Someone honest. Someone intentional. Someone willing to evolve without abandoning herself.

Which is why Élevé Collective matters to me.

A place where we can talk about the future without pretending we already have it all figured out.

None of these parts of me sit in separate boxes. Design, AI, motherhood, horses, entrepreneurship, and identity are all woven together. They share the same lesson:

Growth is holistic, and it becomes powerful when we stop separating who we are from what we build.

“I needed a space to talk about the parts of growth we rarely say out loud. The identity shifts. The inner negotiations. The questions about ambition, meaning, pace, and purpose. I wanted to learn from women who already walked paths I had yet to discover. Women who were not performing success, but living it from a place of depth.

A space to explore where clarity comes from. How we keep evolving without losing our center. How we stay curious in a world obsessed with certainty. How we build with intention instead of pressure.”

From Leading Innovation to Making Room for Real Conversation

This group is not a network. It is a mirror. It is a circle. It is a place where growth is not a performance, but a lived experience. Where your voice, your insight, your work, your reflection, and your self-honesty are not optional. They are the point.

If you are reading this and feel something stir in you
If you have been walking your path quietly and deeply
If you want to be part of a space where thought, emotion, ambition, and evolution sit together

Then you already belong here.

Élevé exists for women like us. Women who are ready to rise. Not by becoming someone else, but by becoming more of who we already are.

If you are in a season where you are building, evolving, questioning, or redefining who you are in the middle of all you do, you are not alone. Élevé Collective exists for women who are ready to grow with depth, not performance. Women who are willing to do the inner work, explore the outer tools, and build lives and careers that feel aligned, not just impressive.

You are invited. Join us. Grow with us. Expand with us.

This article explores identity, clarity, intentional growth, and modern entrepreneurship for women.