Career Futures

Craig Robbins is a Senior Product Design Engineer at Smith Optics, in Portland, Oregon. A University of Oregon graduate with a BS in Materials and Product Studies (2018), Craig specializes in transforming helmet and goggle concepts into market-leading products through CAD, rapid-prototyping, and technical development. He has led the creation of award-winning helmets such as Forefront 3, Hardline, Nexus, and Summit. As a champion of innovation and universal design, Craig played a pivotal role in Smith’s Imprint program, the world’s first 3D printed custom-fit goggle-recognized by Time as one of the 100 best inventions of 2022.

Mica Russo is a lead color designer in the sport and outdoor industry. While completing her Product Design BFA and Spanish BA, she led the UO’s Design for America chapter and interned for OMSI’s exhibit design team. For the last 10 years, Mica has designed footwear colorways worn by athletes running 100-mile trail races, nurses working hospital night-shifts, Ted Lasso coaching on the football pitch, and neighbors taking morning walks. She uses a creative process grounded in immersion, collaboration and play. Lately, she’s found the best palette inspiration backpacking in the mountains and running on her local trails. 

Samantha Rude graduated from the University of Oregon in 2023 with a BFA in Product Design and a minor in Sustainable Business. She has spent the past two years at Schoolhouse, a Portland-based home retail company, managing sourcing and product development for their textile and décor categories. In this role, she oversees the product lifecycle from design concept to final delivery. This includes communicating with international vendors, reviewing samples, and meeting quality and cost targets. With a passion for sustainability, Samantha is also able to utilize her position and work with vendors on increasing sustainable methods and certifications. Outside of work, she is studying up on textile design, building ceramics, or adventuring around Oregon. 

Liz Zarro, Product Design BFA ‘15, currently designs performance bags for Nike, Jordan and ACG brands. She began her professional career in 2013 with an internship at Will Leather Goods. She went on to design products as an Independent Designer on categories from accessories to pet gear to tech and more. For eight years, she designed performance outdoor dog products for Bend-based Ruffwear, leading its color, print, and DTC strategy. Liz’s approach is human-centered. She believes product design should uplift and inspire. 

Derek Franklin is the Anne and John Hauberg Director and Curator of the Douglas F. Memorial Cooley Gallery at Reed College and Founder of SE Cooper Contemporary in Portland, Oregon, while concurrently maintaining his own full-time studio practice. As an artist, Franklin has exhibited his paintings and sculptures for more than twenty years.  On the heels of the pandemic, in 2022, Franklin became Artistic Director of Converge 45, Portland’s citywide Triennial, to produce its third and most promising iteration to date, Social Forms: Art as Global Citizenship, with curator Christian Viveros-Fauné, hosting over sixty artists at seventeen different venues, and attracting over 80,000 viewers to the city. Until recently, Franklin was working alongside renowned curator Lumi Tan on the next edition of Converge 45, Here to You Now, to debut on August 27, 2026.  

vanessa german is poet, performance artist, and sculptor. She defines herself as a “citizen-artist” to contest hegemonic narratives and colonial histories. Her sculptures often evoke power figures to examine class, race, and gender. In her artworks, past and present coalesce through the juxtaposition of materials in an artistic gesture that fosters dialogue and memory and calls for equality and justice. german’s work has been exhibited at The Andy Warhol Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, McNay Art Museum, and the Carnegie Museum of Art, among others. 

Jess Perlitz makes sculptures, performances, and public art to disrupt established expectations – directing attention to incongruous experiences and the potential for connection alike. Born in Toronto, Canada, she received a BA from Bard College, an MFA from Tyler School of Art, and clown training from the Manitoulin Center for Creation and Performance. She is Associate Professor and Head of Sculpture at Lewis & Clark College, the co-director of the EAR Forest, and recently helped lead Portland’s Monuments & Memorials Project. She is the recipient of several awards, notably from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Oregon Arts Commission Joan Shipley Award, and a Joan Mitchell MFA award. In 2019, she was named a Hallie Ford Fellow. Her project, Chorus, is currently installed at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, PA, as part of the museum’s ongoing artists installation series.

Nina Pavlich is a software engineer who enjoys solving hard problems and building things that serve and delight. Originally drawn to programming as a creative outlet, Nina quickly became captivated by the powerful way programming was able to turn ideas into real, working tools.  At The New York Times, she works closely with designers, editors, and teams across the newsroom to imagine, test, and build digital tools that support journalists and reach millions of readers. Her work includes helping launch new products like NYT Parenting and NYT Audio, building data tools that supported COVID reporting during the pandemic, and creating newsroom tools that power a more personalized and visually expressive home page.  Nina studied Digital Art at the University of Oregon, where she learned a human-centered, systems-level approach that continues to guide her work today. Away from screens, Nina spends time tinkering, woodworking, and gardening with her family in Portland, Oregon. 

Mckenzie Sampson is a Portland, OR-based creative with a strong identity within the sports and outdoor industry. With over a decade's worth of design experience, Mckenzie currently leads apparel design and art direction for Canyon Bicycles’ apparel division. He balances both Lifestyle gear and performance-driven racewear and has been featured for his work within the Cycling World Tour, notably: Canyon-Sram’s women’s team and Canyon Factory racing.   Graduating from the University of Oregon BFA Program, Mckenzie has gone on to work for the likes of Adidas, Specialized Bicycles, and Canyon Bicycles and continues to expand on his experience through performance materials, technical silhouettes, and a wide range of graphic and print solutions. 

Finn Sylwester is a digital artist from Portland, working in the games industry. His work skews towards the expressive and whimsically dark, guided by an inspiration for turn-of-the-century Nintendo games.  After graduation from the UO’s Art & Technology program in 2021, Sylwester threw himself into the animation world. Through several ad campaigns, animated shorts, concert visuals, and tv pilots, he built a diverse skillset, ultimately painting the way for a professional pivot into game development later on.  In 2023, he signed onto Elsewhere Communities as Art Director for the Hades inspired rogue-like: Elsewhere Core. Over the next two years, he led the team through production of the game’s visual identity, handling concept art, environment design, 3d modeling, texturing, and animation. Following a departure from the company in mid-2025, he joined Human Computer as Principal Artist, continuing to work on the studio’s debut game in the present day.