About

I’m a founder, builder, mom, and someone who has taken a very non-straight path to get here.

I’ve always liked making things on computers. Websites, graphics, little projects. I studied computer information systems when I was younger, but coding never really became my thing.

People were always just as interesting to me as technology.

I later studied sociology, worked in special education for about ten years, became a health coach, raised three kids as a single mom, and started more businesses than I care to count.

A lot of those businesses did not work.

I learned from them anyway.

Then neurodivergence became personal

My interest in neurodivergence started with my children.

At first, I was a parent trying to understand what they needed and how to support them.

Then I was diagnosed with ADHD.

That one surprised me.

Autism came later, and that diagnosis felt different. It gave me an answer to questions I had carried for most of my life.

For years, I had assumed many of my struggles said something bad about me.

I had spent a lot of time feeling like I was getting life wrong.

Understanding my own neurodivergence changed the way I looked at my past. It also changed the questions I started asking about the future.

Not just for me.

For my children too.

They were growing into adulthood. I knew support could be hard to find, expensive, uncomfortable, or simply not something a person wanted to use.

I started thinking more seriously about what other kinds of support could exist.

I started with community

One of my first responses was Black Autistic & Proud.

I created it because I wanted a space where Black autistic adults could find information, tools, and people who understood some of the overlap between race, autism, identity, and everyday life.

Around that time, I also spent time in autistic support groups and helped lead some of them.

Those experiences taught me a lot.

Mostly, they made me pay closer attention.

People did not always need more advice.

Sometimes they needed clearer words.

More room.

Less pressure.

A way to understand what was happening inside themselves.

Support that actually fit the moment they were in.

Those ideas stayed with me.

AI opened another door

AI became useful to me personally before I ever thought about building a company around it.

I used it to think through things, ask questions I might not have asked another person, challenge old thoughts, and put words around things that were hard for me to explain.

At the same time, I was learning more about how apps were made.

I had always liked technology, but traditional coding still felt like a wall.

Then came AI-assisted coding.

Or, as most of us call it now, vibe coding.

For the first time, I could take an idea in my head and start turning it into something real without first becoming a traditional software developer.

That changed a lot for me.

That led to Atara

I started Atara Systems because I wanted to build technology around real human needs.

One of those ideas became SpectrumThrive, an AI support tool for neurodivergent adults.

The question behind it is still pretty simple:

What could support look like if it paid attention to the person using it?

Their capacity.

Their communication needs.

Their preferences.

Their context.

Not just the task in front of them.

I don’t think technology should replace people.

I do think it can help fill some of the spaces where people are tired, stuck, waiting, overwhelmed, can’t find the right support, or simply want to figure something out on their own.

That is the space I’m interested in building for.

And I’m still learning

I did not take a clean path into technology.

Or business.

Or neurodivergence.

Or much of anything, really.

My path has included school, motherhood, a career working in special education, failed businesses, late diagnosis, community work, AI, and a lot of starting over.

I used to think a messy path meant I had wasted time.

I don’t think that anymore.

A lot of what I’m building now comes from things I learned in places that did not seem connected at the time.

This site is where I write about those connections.

Technology.

Neurodivergence.

Building.

Life.

And whatever I learn next.

I’m still figuring a lot of this out. I just decided to start writing some of it down.