About · Theresa Berg · Chicago
AI product designer in Chicago. I design conversational and agentic AI for enterprises: the moments when a system has to explain itself, ask first or hand the work back to a person. Years of code, brand and design systems came first, so every decision here has a prototype and a reason behind it.
I started as the kid building GeoCities pages at the kitchen table, and I never stopped believing that design and code are the same conversation. That thesis carried me through marketing sites, brand identities, a decade of design systems, and into the place I work now: the seam where an intelligent system meets a person who has to trust it.
2006–2010
I was the kid who snuck onto the family computer outside my scheduled time, building websites, running Dungeons & Dragons forums and recruiting parties in IRC. Somewhere in there I learned a screen was something I could make. Design school at Northern Illinois gave the habit a discipline (and two electric shocks from a lamp I built for a packaging class).
Northern Illinois University · BFA, Visual Communication · 2006–2010
2009–2015
My first jobs sat between disciplines: visual design, brand, marketing sites and the HTML, CSS and PHP that shipped them. I designed in the morning and built in the afternoon, so I learned early what a design promises and what it costs to keep that promise in code. That is still the most useful thing I bring to a team: turning ambiguity into decisions people can act on.
Loud Dreams, my own practice, since 2009 · Forsythe · SignatureForum · SurePayroll · Wargaming · 2009–2015
2015–2024
My work moved from single deliverables to the conditions that make good design repeatable: advocating for UX until it became a real role when it was an early discipline, bringing engineering roles into product definition early, and building design systems with matching front-end libraries so design and code stayed aligned. At one consultancy, the approach I introduced was still in use when I came back years later. That is the best review a system can get.
Tecture · SteelSeries · Highland · CareerPlug · 2015–2024
2015–2024
Healthcare and pharma taught me the need for due diligence and discipline. Years of medical and pharma clients, a journey-mapping engagement for a national medical association, and the first version of an HCP portal for an immunotherapy, where physicians’ offices manage training, prescriptions and prior authorization were all prep work for today. Regulated work taught me necessary precision: every line went through medical and regulatory review. Our choices have a real impact on real people.
Tecture · Highland · Think Company · Ecolab · 2015–2024
2024–2026
In March 2025, I became Ecolab’s first and only AI and agentic designer. I started from a journey map I facilitated with the field teams, worked with Microsoft on where AI could actually help, then designed the assistant, the agents and the rules between them: where the agent acts, where it defers, how a person takes over. I learned MCP from a developer’s docs and built a working Claude-to-Figma proof of concept. The four case studies are that work.
Ecolab · Lead Product Designer, Conversational & Agentic AI · 2024–2026
2026 →
Through Loud Dreams, I created a clinician-facing agentic proof of concept aimed at the time clinicians lose to administrative work, and presented it to physicians and researchers affiliated with the University of Chicago’s School of Medicine. That conversation became an ongoing collaboration to validate it. One research oncologist put it plainly: “This is why I have hope.”
Loud Dreams · Independent · 2026
The system suggests; the person stays in charge, including the choice to walk away.
The system says what it knows, what it doesn’t and where its answer came from.
A working, coded prototype answers questions a Figma prototype, nor slide can.
I am obsessed with patterns, systems, and organizing my life, my knowledge, and my experiences to align with what I see. I am chronically on some kind of digital device, learning, creating, or connecting with my friends. I read mythology and folklore, ancient and modern history, and see all the ways it still ties into the present day, even AI. I enjoy finding the hidden connections, systems, and patterns behind every day forces and the way people have experienced them since the dawn of time. When not tinkering away at whatever project, I am cozying up with my cats, Carmy & Desmond, spending time with friends, or trying to square away more time with nature.
Behind Isn’t It Chironic
A brand is a trust signal. This one is built like the products I design: a story you can check, a mark with a reason, and a system you can open.
Chiron · The centaur
In Greek myth, Chiron was the centaur unlike the others: wise, steady, famous for his knowledge of medicine. He taught Asclepius, Achilles and Jason. A poisoned arrow, loosed by accident, left him with a wound he couldn’t heal, and he kept teaching anyway. Jung later named the pattern “the wounded healer”: the hurt is part of what lets you help.
Designers are in Chiron’s position right now. AI arrived like that arrow, and we are also the people best placed to design the way through it.
“Ironic” · The song
In middle school my mom, who loved Alanis Morissette, sat me down with “Ironic.” Life isn’t fair, she said. It will knock you down. But listen to how the song ends: with the surprise that life can also turn out to be on your side.
That’s how I feel about AI. The technology behind so much of this moment’s ache is the same one that gives me the most hope.
Chiron + “Ironic” = isn’t it chironic.
A wound, a way through, and the chronic irony I can see.
The mark
It crosses the sky instead of heading at the viewer. That is how I think about AI: not a strike from outside, but a new force that entered our sky and settled into orbit, close enough that we are in a relationship with it, far enough that it doesn’t destroy us. The lettering is cut out of the comet’s grain, so the mark takes on whatever is behind it. It comes in three treatments: gradient (the one used across this site), dark for light surfaces and white for dark ones.
In the sky twice
In 1977, astronomer Charles Kowal found an icy body orbiting between Saturn and Uranus and named it Chiron. In 1989 it grew a comet’s glowing cloud and was reclassified as a comet. The wounded healer is a constellation and a comet.
Color
43 primitives feed 32 semantic tokens. Morning is the default; Night is the same tokens in a second mode, so a section switches with one attribute. Every text pair passes WCAG AA in both.
Archivo Expanded Bold · headings
Inter · reading
Type
Bold Expanded headings carry the brand’s voice; Inter keeps long reads comfortable. A 44 to 56 character measure does the rest.
The system · Live
Every token, component and contrast check, read live from the code. It is the same storybook approach I used for the enterprise AI design system in Case Study 3, applied to my own brand. What you see is what ships.
How it’s made
A two-page résumé, impact-first, for when a form asks. It has the dates this page leaves out.
