Kate Borgen

I started coding at 11 and never stopped trying to understand how things work, or how to make them work better. My path into design started in a congressional office, where I spent most of my time manually tracking calls, letters, and emails. Constituent voices got lost in the mechanics of just listening. That shaped how I think about every interface: there's always a real person on the other end, and the tool either helps them or it doesn't.

I design and build tools for people who need them most: citizens trying to reach their representatives, outreach workers serving farmworker communities, cost analysts making sense of defense acquisition data. The common thread is usability with real downstream human impact.

I work across design and engineering as one practice. Some projects I take from concept to shipped product, design and code both. Others I lead a team, mentor apprentices, and stand up a design system alongside the product. I care about scope discipline, research that surprises you, and prompts that read like component specs.

Complex problems need both strategic clarity and technical depth, so I work end-to-end — research and discovery through shipped product, using tools like Claude Code, Lovable, and Figma. There's always a sharper interaction, a faster workflow, a clearer path for the person on the other end.