My path to patent law began on the engineering side. After graduating in 2000, I worked as a systems engineer on telecommunications products at Lucent Technologies, one of the most innovative technology companies in the world.
While the work was technically rigorous, I became increasingly interested in how innovation was protected, valued, and contested. That interest led me to join the intellectual property firm Morgan & Finnegan as a patent agent and technical advisor, where I worked on patent prosecution and supported large-scale patent litigation involving telecommunications technology.
I went on to law school and, after graduating in 2006, joined a litigation-focused boutique firm in Minneapolis. There, I represented clients in high-stakes patent disputes and provided portfolio-level consulting for companies with complex intellectual property assets.
During this period, I appeared dozens of times in federal court and gained extensive hands-on litigation experience. I later spent several years handling generic pharmaceutical (ANDA) litigation and served as second-chair trial counsel in a seven-day federal jury trial involving a consumer product and expert testimony.