Mentorship

I don't have one. My bachelor's is in public health, and I came in through a community college web design program while working. What moved it forward was never a portfolio, it was applying whatever I was learning to help the team I was already on. That built genuine relationships, and those are what opened every door since.

Fundamentals. Tool fluency gets you through a screening exercise and stops mattering a week into the job. Defending your thought process in a room of engineers and executives never stops mattering.

Your unique decisions, not just the deliverables. Anyone can post a final screen. What a hiring manager can't get elsewhere is why you chose that structure over the alternatives. If it still makes sense with the images removed, it's doing its job.

It wasn't a leap, it was an accumulation. I kept building the thing behind the thing: design systems, templates, automations. That's already product thinking. Start volunteering for the scoping conversations you're handed the output of.

Yes, and the booking link below is the right way to ask. Come with a specific question rather than "any feedback". Specific questions get you tailored feedback, and far more of it in twenty minutes.