AIA story portfolio
Roughly every seven years, I’ve started over. This is what came with me every time.
Every career is a story, and most are never told. This is mine, the long way, and why the work is called 28th & Vine.
The road so far
Chapter I · 1990s
AIReal estate is in my blood. As a little girl I rode along with my grandma through Del Mar, Solana Beach and Rancho Santa Fe, her market for as long as I have known her. I watched her work, and I watched her care about people. I did not know it yet, but I was learning what this work could be.
Home was Mira Mesa, San Diego, and every chance we had, my dad and I were on the sand at Torrey Pines. Nature, energy and the sun became my core. They still are.
Then life kicked me out of Mira Mesa and planted me in Temecula wine country. It would be years before I understood why it had to be wine country.
Chapter II · 2006
AI
In 2006, California State University San Marcos awarded my team its Project of Distinction, one of only three given that year. It was marketing from start to finish: the research, a customer survey and a full marketing plan for a real company.
My favorite classes were with Dr. Bill Burns, my favorite professor of all and the one who oversaw our project. Looking back, I should have gone for a degree in marketing. The signs were all there.
Everything since has been an education in business from the inside, starting with the real numbers behind small companies, at a financial institution. And marketing kept finding me anyway.
The project, in full
Our team’s report for The Plotkin Group, December 2006: the research, the customer survey, the marketing plan and every appendix. Eighty pages. Turn them here, or open the full page.
The method, 2006
For the report we scored every one of The Plotkin Group’s 175 clients by RFM, seven years of sales in a spreadsheet. The top 35 brought in $1.25 million, 47% of everything. That is where the marketing should go.
2006 · The Plotkin Group · sales by RFM group
35 clients in each group. Group 5 alone outsold groups 1 to 3 together.
Chapter III · 2010s
AI
AI
I became a student at Paul Mitchell The School Temecula, part of a network known as the “Harvard” of its field. After graduating I went into the industry, doing nails at iCandy Nails in Oceanside, then came back to the school at the front desk. From there I grew through role after role, into management, and later co-directed Paul Mitchell The School East Bay.
I taught from the black Milady book and led State Board classes, and as a Future Professional Advisor I coached our students, the future professionals, all the way to their exams. I am the one on camera in the school’s training video: setting up a station on the rows for a student, the worksheets every student completes to test out, and the exams they perform on models.
I taught makeup with the Future Professional Makeup Academy alongside Robert Jones, and wrote its training manual and the systems that run it. It still runs today, with Temecula as its flagship. I grew under some of the best leadership I have ever known, and it grew my love for people: coaching, art, and looking for the beauty in everything. Running a school taught me that people learn by making something real, not by watching someone else make it.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, cut out and tonedSuccess unshared is failure.
John Paul DeJoriaCo-founder, John Paul Mitchell Systems and Paul Mitchell Schools
Chapter IV · 2019
AI
AIReal estate found its way back to me, and so did marketing. For seven years I built the marketing and the brand beside JD Diaz, a top 1% producer in the Las Vegas Valley, across four brokerages. Films for luxury homes, websites, campaigns: the brand and the marketing busy people never have time to do themselves. Filming luxury homes taught me more than any class could.
It was one of the most rewarding careers I have had, and one of the most trying. I learned how a brand is made, how trust is earned one client at a time, and how much work it takes to make something look effortless.
$174.5Mtotal sales since 2017, 344 homes
$33.4Mclosed in 2025, 26 homes
$818Kgross commission income, 2025
Top 250nationally, every year since 2019
The agent I supported
JD Diaz
Luxury Real Estate Advisor, IS Luxury
AIReal estate filmmaking · 2019 to 2026
Seven years of real estate films, working all the way up to luxury homes like these. JD in front of the camera, me behind it.
When you step outside a circle and keep walking, you carry everything it taught you, and you find the people who will walk the next road with you.
Every season ends. I left grateful for what those years taught me and for the people I built with, and clear about where my energy belongs and who I want to build with next.
The same clarity came home with me
My son Kobe learns best in a small room, at his own pace, with someone right beside him. A full classroom cannot always give a child that. Home can.
I taught him at home for 2nd grade and watched him grow in ways I will never forget. This year we are home again, for 6th grade, and I am proud to be his teacher.
Chapter V · 2026
AI
AIThis year it felt like wrestling with God over who belongs in my life and who does not. Everything I had been praying about came to light at once, and it pushed me up and over the edge into decisions I had been putting off. A new city. A new chapter. In a lot of ways, an entirely new life.
One of the clearest answers was a new name. I was born on the 28th of November. Twenty-eight is a perfect number: the numbers that divide into it add up to exactly 28. It is about one turn of the moon, an ending and a beginning. And it is four sevens, completion four times over.
The vine is from John 15, and from the wine country where life planted me as a girl. A branch does not strain to bear fruit. It stays connected. That is what I want this work to be.
The name · 28
01 / 04
One turn of the moon
From new moon to new moon is about twenty-nine and a half days; the moon circles the Earth in a little over twenty-seven. Twenty-eight sits between.
02 / 04
Four sevens
In scripture seven is completion: the work finished, then rest. Twenty-eight is completion, four times over.
03 / 04
A perfect number
Its divisors, 1, 2, 4, 7 and 14, add up to exactly 28. Nothing missing, nothing extra.
04 / 04
Born on the 28th
The 28th is where I started. The vine is how I grow.
Chapter VI · Now
AI
AIToday
Today I build websites, Google profiles and the systems behind small businesses, and I use AI the way the film world uses its tools: to tell bigger stories, never to replace them.
Become a memberHow it all connects
Drag to turn it. Point at a role to see what it gave me, or at a skill to see where it came from.
Banking taught the numbers. Schools taught people. Luxury taught the brand. AI ties it together.
Seven-year chapters
Banking. Beauty and education. Luxury real estate. Now 28th & Vine. Each one looked like starting over, and each one carried everything before it. Yours does too.
2003
Wells Fargo: Temecula, La Costa, Encinitas, 2003 to 2010
2012
Paul Mitchell The School, Temecula: front desk to management
Future Professional Makeup Academy
East Bay from 2015, school co-director
2019
Las Vegas, four brokerages
Every role beside JD Diaz: entrepreneur
2026
The idea in July
Official in October
AINext · 2026 to 2033
Roughly every seven years I begin again. This is the board on my wall for the next seven: faith first, a home in the pines, a farm, strength, and work that gives the time back to my family.
The long way Fin.
28th & VineCreate your own long way
Here is the shortcut to yours.
01
$28one time
A step-by-step guide to the story, the films, the map and the sideways scroll, with AI prompts to draft your own story. AI tools are yours to bring.
Arrives by email right after you pay.
What it took me: started October 20, 2026 · 24 hours over 2 days · 120 versions · 100+ marked-up screenshots · 70+ rounds of AI images and films · about $738 in AI tools that month · $3,840 of my time. What it takes you: $28, and the shortcut.
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