Designing a Life: Insights From a Whittie Web Designer

When Anna Dawson ’13 arrived at Whitman College, she didn’t have a long-term career strategy. She simply majored in subjects she loved: Studio Art and English. “I took some pretty niche classes,” the Seattle native recalls. “I didn’t know how it would all fit together, but now it just does.”

That instinct to follow her passions has shaped Dawson’s career. In 2024, she launched Saint Scout, a web design and branding studio based in Madrid, Spain. Her path to entrepreneurship wound through advertising and a major pivot into user experience (UX) design. But Dawson says her compass has remained the same: a liberal arts foundation that taught her how to think flexibly and creatively.

Thriving on Range & Change

As a Whittie, Dawson relished courses combining history, art and literature. After graduation, she worked for global agencies Stein and Publicis. “Advertising sits at the intersection of visual and written communication,” she explains, “so it felt like a natural next step.” As an art director and digital designer, she was soon developing campaigns for brands like T-Mobile and Aflac.

But a desire for change led to a move into UX design, first for small startups and then for companies like Shopify and Vista. “UX designers make sure that people have intuitive, human-centric experiences when using tech products,” she says. “They package features so they’re usable, polished and pleasant to interact with. The work pairs visual design with problem-solving.” And that, she adds, “is where I really found my footing career-wise.”

Whitman prepared her well for both fields. “In marketing and UX, more than half the battle isn’t coming up with good designs; it’s defending your ideas in a compelling way,” she says. In Whitman’s small classes, she got comfortable articulating her thoughts in both writing and presenting, which has served her well when pitching to engineers, product managers and clients.

Making the Leap

In 2022, Dawson spent a life-changing month working remotely in Madrid. On her last night, she met Enrico Loriga—a health tech entrepreneur from Sardinia. The relationship bloomed long-distance, but it also gave Dawson a reason to fulfill a long-held dream of living abroad.

Moving to Europe was “magical, but also very complicated,” Dawson says. She loved learning about Madrid’s culture and found community among fellow expats. But with fewer UX opportunities and no local network, she realized that building a remote business rooted in her U.S. connections was her best way forward. “So I made the leap by starting Saint Scout,” she says, “and I haven’t looked back.”

Today, Dawson helps fellow entrepreneurs translate their missions into authentic, visually compelling websites. “I love getting immersed in what led a client to found their business, their why, and what makes them unique,” she says. “It’s a little UX, a little marketing, a little psychology. I get to draw from everything, and that really inspires me.”