Senior motion designer with a decade of experience translating complex ideas into clear, engaging visual stories. I combine animation and creative strategy to help people understand products, concepts, and the world around them.
Brilliant is an interactive math app built around a simple challenge: making one of the subjects people fear most feel intuitive, visual, and engaging. I worked across every touchpoint used to reach new audiences and grow the product — directing and editing ads that grew Meta spend 4x, shaping the onboarding redesign that lifted signups 6.5%, and animating sponsored content that reached 700M+ views on YouTube's biggest science channels. After nearly 5 years on a small, multidisciplinary team, I'm comfortable moving from strategy to execution, solving unfamiliar problems, and bringing wildly different briefs to life — sometimes all in the same week.
Brilliant's premium upsell ads ran between lessons, a moment when users just want to get back to learning. Looking at how apps like Duolingo leaned on their mascots and kept each ad to a single value prop, I proposed the same approach here: one clear idea per ad, giving us room to lean into entertainment over a hard sell. For some ads, like the one featuring ancient mathematician Archimedes, I created the concept and original script. For others, I iterated on my colleagues' concepts, developing the humor further in the animation phase through timing, cuts, zooms, visual effects, and sound design.
Users liked the ads so much they started leaving comments about them in our app store reviews, and they lifted trial starts and checkouts ~20% over the previous ad. I personally animated half the launched set, wrote the concept for a fourth, and built the character rigs used across all six.
My work has always centered around the same challenge: finding the clearest, most human way to communicate complex ideas. I've created short educational videos on public-interest topics like global food systems, racial divides in the working class, and prosecutorial power; translated complex benefits programs into accessible animations for eBay teams worldwide; and turned dense conference talks into live visual notes, synthesizing ideas in real time.
My life has been defined by a major theme: I'm unusually capable of diving into unfamiliar spaces and figuring out how to make something amazing. Outside of work, that shows up in the challenges I take on just for fun — like teaching myself to knit, or building a hydroponic garden.
That drive is rooted in my history as an internationally competitive ultimate frisbee player and winner of the Callahan Award, the sport's national college MVP. The highlight video I made as my entry went viral, and to this day, people come up to me at tournaments to tell me how it changed what they believed was possible.
Constantly pushing my own limits has built a deep tenacity and an unusually wide creative range across animation, design, and making things with my hands. I naturally gravitate toward small, scrappy teams and a constant stream of new, varied projects. Right now, I'm looking for a role where I can get hands-on and flex my full creativity.
“Marisa is talented, adaptable, endlessly curious, and grounded in the fundamentals of good storytelling […] She’s a creative team’s ultimate Swiss Army knife, moving effortlessly between any and every creative project.”
“If I were a client, Marisa is the woman I’d turn to when I’m a little bit desperate, in over my head, and have no idea which way to turn. Her competence, creativity, and practicality make her an excellent match for righting the ship.”
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