At Dell, I noticed what the industrial design team's renders were becoming capable of and started asking questions. I brought the right people together to explore where CGI could solve real production needs, helping move it from curiosity to pilot to a working production method.

At Aniden, I was the outsider photographer walking into an established CGI team. The standards only stuck because I shot alongside the artists first and showed what I meant rather than handing down a rule. Across the Austin and Houston teams, the goal was the same: shared reference, shared review, one definition of done.

One 9-person group was splitting its time between stills and animation based on who was available. I grew it to 16 and organized it by specialization: 6 stills artists and a 10-person animation group covering lighting, comp, VFX, tech lead, motion, and editorial. Each group could then build the process its work actually needed.

I trained 20 artists across two studios on photographic lighting and built reference photography, lighting guidance, material libraries, and written standards that made quality easier to understand, repeat, and review.

With CGI, the question was never simply whether it could make an image. It was where it offered an advantage over photography, where it didn't, and what process would make it reliable under commercial pressure. That's the same lens I bring to AI: understand the process first, find where the technology creates real value, and integrate it around what actually helps the team.

I rebuilt the still-image pipeline and quality controls so the team could absorb roughly 30–40% more Dell volume, then helped build the animation operation into an efficient and profitable practice. Growth held because responsibilities, processes, and quality expectations grew with it.