Founder / Lead Developer

Designed, built, and operates a live 3D social platform solo, end to end: product, interface, code, and the serverless backend (Cloudflare Workers, D1, Durable Objects, R2) - accounts with deliberately strict signup, real-time presence and chat with nothing stored server-side, a 1:1 DM relay, and a peer-to-peer stall marketplace. Planned since 2015; the presentable product was implemented in under a month through an AI-agent workflow (Claude Code, authored agent skills, written standards, QA passes).

Operations Coordinator

Sole producer of the company's complete Alaska + Canada travel tariff catalogue under the Founder - hundreds of pages of pricing, supplier and product data, and print-ready production.

Systems built on the floor

Converted the legacy database into an API as a single source of truth and built a partner-hotel map one click from the main page titles. Authored the formatting style guide and enforced it with JavaScripts inside InDesign; Python tooling on the API compressed months of manual production into a single day. Started as an intern; the redesign was the main reason the internship became a full-time role.

When not to ship

Built a working online tariff on the API within weeks of joining, then chose not to launch it: the B2B partners were older and the company's direction was trust built on accuracy, so the better design was improving the existing tariffs and transitioning gradually.

High-pressure service discipline

Eight steady years on the restaurant's hot foods, maintaining quality standards in a busy kitchen - holiday rushes, ingredient delivery control, and consistent team communication.

Why it matters digitally

In July 2026, at the owner's earnest request, I returned for three months as emergency staff - eight years of trust, called back. The role adds operational reliability: pace, detail, quality control, and team trust under pressure.

Server at Tawara Sushi

Worked as a server at Tawara Sushi, a Japanese restaurant - in the same location where Sushi Umi stands now. It was there that my interest in cooking itself took hold.

Scouted by the incoming team

When Sushi Umi took over the room, its team scouted me. With the Tawara owner's understanding, I joined Umi - and moved into its kitchen as a cook. In those eight years, every other sushi restaurant within about five blocks closed; Umi was the one left standing, and I helped it open a second location on Granville Street.

Tourism studies

Studied cultural studies, communications, environmental stewardship, tour product development, and entrepreneurship.

Connection to Zealandia

The tourism and product-development layer behind Zealandia, Fiji Gateway, Cauldron travel logic, and the travel blog. The studies themselves began with Espil.Online in mind - the tourism future I am building toward.

Client practice, end to end

Designed and built client websites end-to-end for a decade - discovery, identity, UI/UX, implementation, and launch - across a 50-project portfolio in many industries.

The dermatology web system

Built a complete web system for a dermatology practice: landing site, chatbot reservations, and an online booking system with calendar sync, carried from discovery to launch - alongside client sites including a PhD researcher's website and numerous small-business and commerce builds.

Healthcare software project

Worked with medical professionals, executives, and a design team on early-stage healthcare software direction, technical planning, and workflow design.

Product lesson

The project strengthened product thinking beyond features: operational constraints, user workflows, and planning under stakeholder pressure.

The only employee

I joined as the company's only employee - my first remote job - taking over from a predecessor who left within days. Hired to write blog posts, I was soon finishing them in under thirty minutes, and the work kept widening: building and managing the websites, running the SNS channels, growing its YouTube channel to its first 1,000 subscribers, and, for additional pay, editing the CELPIP and IELTS lecture series and subtitling them.

Clients, and a company growing

For additional pay I also met clients directly and ran the all-in-one landing service end to end - home search, contract management, school registration and licence registrations. The two-person Slack I joined had about ten people by the time I left: an administrator, a web developer, a blog writer, and immigration consultants in several countries. The videos I produced for the channel are still its most-watched, with over 500,000 views between them.

The SEO was the sharp edge: on early-child-care searches, Nohproblem filled the first pages of both Naver and Google, and the local businesses promoted alongside it - an auto mall, telecom and moving services, schools - grew into names Vancouver knows. People from those years still ask for me by name.

Hired in sales

I joined HMC - Han Mobility, a mobile distributor - in sales, and grew through marketing and design work into the company's full-stack developer, and its backend person.

The franchise floor

On the company's Freedom Mobile franchise floor (September 2019 - April 2020) I sold Rogers, Telus and Fido lines: customer service, up-to-date tech information, support for the manager's marketing strategies, and advertisement graphics I designed myself.

The company's systems

I migrated the entire Excel-based customer list into a real database, fully manageable through CRUD, and designed and built the company's intranet - CMS, databases, dashboards and automated PDF data entry using OCR - its web platform on the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js).

Design to workflow

Where visual design became internal tools, automation, data handling, and business workflow.

Digital Design Development

Studied graphic design with Adobe Suite, web-based marketing, business communication, accounting, web development, application development, and project management.

Bridge skill

The education connected visual presentation, practical development, marketing, and project delivery.

Human-centered study

Studied acupuncture, natural science, anatomy, and herbalism at PCU College of Holistic Medicine.

Design relevance

Adds human-centered observation, body systems, care logic, and attention to practical usability.

My aunt's restaurant

In Korea I worked at Hwatongsam, the well-known restaurant my aunt ran - serving tables and managing the floor.

The F&B foundation

Front-of-house service and management in a busy Korean dining room - the groundwork for the restaurant years that followed, at Tawara and Sushi Umi.

Travel graphics and coordination

Curated customer trips, coordinated detailed plans for international destinations, and created timeline infographics for travelers.

Interface lesson

The work turned complex travel schedules into clearer visual guidance, which now connects directly to tourism UX.

Bartender

Worked as a bartender at FANTACITY in 2014–15.

Kept as a skill

Brief as it was, bartending remains a working skill I can still use.

Fine Arts foundation

Studied art history, drawing and painting, photography, graphics, and product design.

Design memory

The visual foundation behind the portfolio: composition, material sense, photography, and product-form thinking.

Education origin

Completed high school at Sentinel Secondary School in West Vancouver.

Portfolio origin

The earliest timeline anchor before fine arts, web design, tourism operations, and Zealandia.