About me

The name is Saleena Nisha Beharry.

I’m just a kid from the Bronx who also grew up in Westchester, often going back and forth between the two. Traveling along the Bronx River Parkway became a familiar rhythm: buildings giving way to trees northbound, then trees to buildings southbound, two wildly different realities connected by the same winding road. Long before I had the words for the difference, I moved through both without mistaking either for the whole story.

Contrast lives in my work. I know when to be scrappy, when to make something out of almost nothing, and when the moment calls for polish so precise it feels inevitable. Neither is more honest than the other. Good design is knowing what the situation needs and understanding that luxury is almost never a substitute for care.

Riding the Metro-North back and forth to Westchester, I read the morning newspapers Wall Street execs left behind on the seats. The salmon-pink Financial Times was my fav, it was cute. Percentages, tables, graphs, all in faded black ink, each of us finding order in the numbers as the train rocked beneath us. Maybe that’s why I like designing in finance... to make the complicated clear without pretending the stakes are simple.

Somewhere in becoming a designer, I’ve learned I’m sometimes the craftsperson. Sometimes I’m the jester, mocking the ceremony just long enough to ask if any of it matters. I like just enough mischief to keep the work from taking itself too seriously. The joke has to land, and so does the work.

Don’t mistake playfulness for a lack of ambition. Unfashionably, I strive for mastery while speed gets the praise. Mastery gives freedom to break form without breaking trust; I could hardly be proud of anything I would hesitate to recommend to my family and friends.

Design, code, data, strategy, whatever it takes to make it real. My work refuses to be one thing.