I was born in a small house in the forest of Eastern Canada, not far outside of Toronto. As a kid, I was mostly focused on 2 things: sports and building. I competed in many sports in my early years ranging from baseball, soccer, wrestling, football, swimming and basketball, but found my main passion when I started playing rugby at 14 years old. Competing and winning multiple championships for my high school, club teams, and varsity university squad and briefly coaching during my Master’s when I wasn’t eligible to play. I was obsessed, training 10-15 times a week and playing on 7s and 15s squads year-round. Outside of sports, I loved to build things with my hands. I remember helping my dad to build a shed at 3 years old, passing him tools and hammering nails. At 8 years old I built a small paintball gun by taking apart lighters, and film canisters and pasting them together with PVC piping. Not to mention accidentally lighting my driveway on fire from an overly ambitious pyrotechnic display around the age of 10.

When I was 17, I went off to Queen’s University to study mechanical engineering and after my first year landed an internship and subsequent full-time offer to Bombardier Aerospace where I was working as a mechanical engineer on the new CS100 and CS300 commercial jets. I couldn’t stand the bureaucracy and was left questioning if engineering was even for me. That fall I come across Abstract - a Netflix series following different designers, one of them being about Tinker Hatfield and his journey with designing the Air Jordan shoe line. As a long-time athlete and builder, this felt like the perfect intersection of my skills and interests. I reached out cold to one of the head footwear researchers at Nike. Turns out we played on the same varsity rugby team a generation apart. He answered me and told me that if I wanted to design the best shoes, I should study Biomechanics. If we understand how the body works, we can build products to augment and elevate. The next week I switched my studies to biomechanical engineering and joined one of Canada’s top research labs studying kinematics of human motion around the wrist and ankle.

For the next 5 years, I deepened my academic studies in biomechanics going on to complete my Master’s in Biomedical Engineering from Brown University with a focus in orthotics and prosthetics. Over these years, I was introduced to many people with physical disabilities in wheelchairs, missing limbs and with forms of muscular dystrophy. Professors and peers would connect me, and people would always ask if I could design something to help them move better. To help them become more independent in their lives. I was still trying to find my way into making shoes, but I couldn’t help but to pay attention to these requests, and so I dedicated these years to various forms of assistive technology. I worked with 2 startups building robotic exoskeletons: 1 for people in wheelchairs with spinal cord injuries, the other for children with cerebral palsy. I worked with orthotic and prosthetic clinics testing 3D modeling and printing in their workflows, and took on a number of my own patients independently who couldn’t afford care from a clinic.

After years of working multiple jobs, degrees and side projects at the same time, I decided I needed a break to reset and understand how I wanted to align my life and find my place in this world. I spent the summer of 2021 living in a tent in Northern Canada planting a little over 100,000 trees with a small shovel in a reforestation project. I spent a few months before and after living out of the back of my Honda CR-V mountain biking, rock climbing, snowboarding and surfing different huns around the Canadian Rockies and Pacific Coast. I ended the experience by joining a land defence protest on Vancouver Island, building tactical roadblocks to stop loggers from driving in and cutting down ancient trees in the Fairy Creek old-growth forest. Maybe one of the best uses I’ve had so far for my skills as a builder. After this year of nature, adventure and self-exploration, one thing was clear. I couldn’t stop thinking about my patients and the custom products I was designing for them.

In January 2022, I moved to Mexico City with no job, no money, no friends, and not a word of Spanish. Why? I visited a friend passing through there and in 24 hours my whole body and essence told me I needed to stay. And so I did. I knew I wanted to work again with patients, and began focusing more on prosthetic legs which have a bigger market opportunity. With the emergence of 3D printing, image recognition and generative design, I figured there was an opportunity to bring some new tools into an outdated industry. I began building a process for 3D printing custom prosthetic sockets which makes the workflow faster and cheaper compared to traditional plaster methods. It also gives us the ability to bring a level of industrial design to the product which is not otherwise possible. I put together a team of designers, engineers and developers to develop the process. Over the past 2 years we have worked with 3 clinics in Mexico and the U.S. testing this process, and have a number of patients walking around in our prosthetic legs.

As I sit here and write these words, I face the crossroads of understanding what comes next. There is a business opportunity here and we have clinics interested in collaborating. This path is beautiful and edges towards my mission of democratizing accessible assistive technology to help people navigate the world freely with independence. It also puts me in the position of being The Founder with my emphasis being on sales and business development to scale the idea. While I believe in what end goal could be achieved in this process, it takes me out of the creative act of design which I love so deeply. When I can’t sleep at night I grab my sketchbook and products of shoes, apparel, jewellery, prosthetic legs and assistive technology pour out of me. It’s something that goes against my values to ignore.

Simply put, I just want to create. I spent the past decade as a student of design, engineering, business and philosophy. I worked on many independent projects, and was a design lead for many small projects. Now, I’m here to take my career to the next level. I want to join one of the best innovation labs in the world where I can learn from the people around me. I want to see the inner workings of how the best creators do it. I want to understand high-level business from within and see how to bring new products to the world from a holistic process. I want to sit down with clear tasks and goals in front of me and put all of my attention and intention into the creative act itself. This is my commitment.

I am looking to bring to you my talents as a product designer. If my story, projects or experience interest you and feel aligned, feel free to reach out and let's talk. I’m always happy to explore ideas and opportunities.

- Ash