Primary Recent Experience: 2011 - Present
Northwestern Mutual
Vice President and Head of Design 2021 - August 2024
I lead 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 consists of 6 Senior Directors who manage 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.
If it’s on a screen, it’s designed by my organization.
I frame my experience, impact, and direction through 3 primary themes:
Establishing 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.
- Manage the budget and design resources to effectively deliver on our commitments
- Position Design as an effective partner to the organization via tying design activity to business impact, enterprise goals and outcomes
Empowering the Design Team
- Create the space for agency, curiosity, diversity & inclusion, and intentionality in the practice
- Emphasize design-led hypothesis-driven product development practices, including experimentation and actively monitoring betas and early releases to inform fast-follows
Elevating Design Excellence
- Created consistency & clarity in practice and leveling at scale.
- Prioritized growth and development through internal mobility and intentional skill development frameworks
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 $4MM product design & user experience team that serves 5 business units across the global stock exchange and fintech leader
- Instituted 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
Managing Designers
- Directly manage, coach, and mentor design leadership team, including Director of User Experience, Creative Director, Director of Design Research & Customer Insights, & Director of Mobile Design
- Scaled a team from 1 to 30 in 4 years through direct recruiting efforts, saving over 200k annually in recruiter & placement fees and improving overall hiring quality
Leading Digital Transformation via Design
- Regularly present strategic design initiatives to executive management and officers, including CEO, CFO, and Board of Directors
- Executive producer of Nasdaq Pro/Design Conference (NYC 2015) and 2 Pro/Design Masterclasses (SF 2016) to showcase compelling speakers exploring how design and research are critical to business strategy
- Created a cross-business customer advisory board of clients and users to help sales, service, commercial teams, and design better understand our users & buyers
Leading Innovation
- Designers on my team are cited as inventor in 32 patents (16 pending) as of 2017
- Launched Nasdaq Mosaiq, a design research asset management system now available as a free download for agencies, start-ups, and enterprises
- Led multiple cross-team innovation workshops & sprint teams to explore latent, unmet customer needs and evaluate new business opportunities across silos
Awards and Recognition
- Invited into and successfully completed the Nasdaq Emerging Leader Program, a 6 month cross-company leadership development training & coaching program with a practical challenge: investigate how to scale Nasdaq's machine learning and artificial intelligence efforts across the company for compounded returns
- IR Insight awarded 2 STEVIE Awards in Data Visualization (Silver) and Business Intelligence (Gold) in 2017
- Promoted from Managing Director to Associate Vice President in 2014
- Awarded “Most Effective In-House Team” by UX Week in 2013
