Primary Recent Experience: 2011 - Present
Diligent Inc
Vice President and Head of Design August 2024 - Present
Making some sweet stuff and maturing the design practice. Hell yeah.
Northwestern Mutual
Vice President and Head of Design 2021 - August 2024
I led the strategic vision and management of the 120+ person Design organization, inclusive of Product Design, Design Strategy, Research, Content Strategy, and Design Program Management.
My leadership team consisted of 6 Senior Directors who managed 16 design managers across a workforce based in New York City, Milwaukee, and remotely across the United States.
The Design organization supports multiple users and business priorities, including financial advisor tools with AI recommendations, client-facing web sites and mobile apps, underwriting and policy servicing tools enhanced with large-language-model based GPT systems, and financial planning products.
I frame my experience, impact, and direction through 3 primary themes:
Established the Design Foundation
- Scaled the Design function from about 60 practitioners and leaders in 2021 to over 120 while also raising the bar of craft, performance, and culture.
- Redesigned my leadership team and leader accountabilities & partnerships to better align with product management, business stakeholders, and create additional growth and development opportunities.
- Managed the budget and design resources--and made the hard calls when I had to, including reducing FTE and contingent staff, and drawing down less-impactful teams-- to effectively deliver on our commitments.
- Positioned Design as an effective partner to the organization via tying design activity to business impact, enterprise goals and outcomes.
Empowered the Design Team
- Created the space for agency, curiosity, and intentionality in the practice, leading to better work at the appropriate fidelity to address our highest impact efforts.
- Emphasized design-led hypothesis-driven product development practices, including experimentation and early releases to inform fast-follows and make sometimes-unpopular but accurate recommendations.
Elevated Design Excellence
- Created consistency & clarity in how teams practice design and how designers are leveled at scale, which unlocked improved staffing deployment across diverse projects.
- Prioritized growth and development through internal mobility and intentional skill development frameworks resulting in next to no voluntary resignations over a near 3 year span.
Meta Platforms
Product Design Leader 2020 - 2021
Led Recruiting Products design functions, supporting candidates, recruiters, interviewers, and hiring managers.
InVision
Principal, Design Transformation 2018 - 2019
I worked directly with InVision clients to level up their design practice and help their larger business understands the value of design, often through a variety of methods including customized, inclusive presentations and workshops for audiences across the organization.
Nasdaq, Inc.
Global Head of Design and User Experience 2011 - 2018
General manager of a 30 person product design & user experience team that served 5 business units across the global stock exchange and fintech leader.
As the initial designe and design leader, I establishd all product design processes, including customer research, lean UX & agile principles, designers prototyping in HTML, CSS, and JS, iterative customer feedback via usability testing and beta programs, and analytics to guide future development.
