Design manager / Systems thinker / Excellence in craft & quality
Work experience
Owner
NEUDESIGN / JUN 2004–PRESENT / SEATTLE
Design leadership: execute creative projects, spanning UX, brand, visual, and systems design across diverse media for artists, designers, musicians, and nonprofits.
AI innovation: lead research and experience development with large language models for prompt engineering, UX research, and strategic image creation.
Senior manager, product design
SMARTSHEET / FEB 2021–JAN 2022 / BELLEVUE
Team building & leadership: established and led a multidisciplinary team to create a comprehensive library of accessible design components.
Strategic development: championed the creation of a central documentation website, ensuring a consistent and accessible design system.
Cross-functional collaboration: collaborated closely with UI engineering and product teams to prioritize and deliver essential React components.
Community engagement: initiated and conducted monthly community meetings to foster support and momentum for the design system.
Award-winning innovation: guided teams to win the UX journey award with a design sprint process. Executed impactful customer-focused design labs at Smartsheet’s ENGAGE customer conference.
Manager, design systems
SMARTSHEET / FEB 2022–MAR 2024 / BELLEVUE
Leadership & team management: successfully hired and managed a team of designers, fostering stability and integration across multiple acquisitions.
Collaborative vision: unified diverse teams to establish shared principles and a cohesive vision for content-related experiences on the platform.
Innovative methodologies: introduced jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) and object-oriented UX (OOUX) methodologies to enhance product strategy and user experience.
Process standardization: operationalized engagement standards to ensure consistent processes and predictable outcomes in product design collaborations.
Professional development: championed a designer-led talk series to advance the team’s expertise in critical growth areas such as typography and data visualization.
Principal user experience architect
SMARTSHEET / JUL 2020–JAN 2021 / BELLEVUE
Strategic reorientation: influenced a dozen product team plans to focus on high-value customer experiences like project management, breaking down company silos.
Customer-centric leadership: led stakeholder and customer conversations, integrating UX research insights early to prevent expensive rework.
Blueprint for success: co-created a service blueprint that outlines key business use cases, guiding the company’s strategic enterprise growth initiative.
Facilitative excellence: conducted over 60 design thinking workshops, significantly improving the project success rate and stability of team roadmaps.
Influential management: managed comprehensive programs that set new standards in information architecture and design, impacting product strategy and the organizational structure.
Senior product designer
VMWARE (PIVOTAL LABS) / JAN 2017–JUL 2020 / DC
Leadership & development: fostered the growth of nearly a dozen product designers, preparing them to become leaders within the organization.
Strategic planning: aligned product features and roadmaps with organizational OKRs to ensure delivery of customer value and business success.
Innovation & empathy: promoted a culture of experimentation to validate design assumptions and deepen user empathy.
Design collaboration: advanced design consistency and team collaboration through the implementation of design systems and participation in critique.
Senior user experience architect
LAB49 / JUN 2014–DEC 2016 / DC
User-centered design leadership: launched user-centered design workshops and educated team members on integrating UX best practices into the RFP process and service delivery.
Strategic innovation: empowered incumbent IT departments to evolve and compete with fin-tech startups, and guided a state-owned enterprise in pivoting its digital transformation towards service-centric strategies.
Accessible design direction: spearheaded the design of a responsive renewable energy certificate management application, ensuring compliance with W3C accessibility standards for inclusive user experiences.
Lead user experience designer
3PILLAR GLOBAL / MAR 2013–JUN 2014 / FAIRFAX
Global Team leadership: guided an international team in prototyping, testing, and launching an educational tool for gifted students.
Reputation management: enhanced the IT help desk’s reputation for a major pharmaceutical company by personalizing the support experience.
Market strategy: implemented user-centered design at a leading investment firm, aiding in the recovery of market share from agile financial startups.
Talent acquisition strategy: formulated a policy with executives to streamline the recruitment of top design talent in line with the company’s strategic goals.
Senior interaction designer
TEAGUE / JAN 2009–MAR 2013 / SEATTLE
Innovation facilitation: transitioned the company from a traditional industrial design vendor to a comprehensive interdisciplinary innovation partner.
Service expansion: introduced new service offerings in user research, service design, interaction design, and rapid prototyping, broadening the company’s capabilities.
Cross-disciplinary coordination: orchestrated the collaboration of diverse teams, including 3D, motion, graphic, and interaction designers, as well as software developers and branding experts.
Strategic research leadership: directed ethnographic usability studies with a team of researchers, designers, and executives to inform and validate product strategy.
Future-proof design: developed interactive prototypes and guidelines for cross-device experiences, shaping the vision for the ‘office of the future’.
Interactive art director
JUL 2003–JAN 2009 / NEW YORK / AUSTIN / SEATTLE
Multimedia campaign development: spearheaded interactive campaigns and event concepts, enhancing corporate branding and customer engagement.
Cross-functional team leadership: collaborated with designers, writers, and developers, encouraging team communication with mobile social networking integration.
Diverse design expertise: excelled in creating versatile design solutions for web, print, and 3D modeling across various industries and client needs.
Education
Pratt Institute
BFA COMMUNICATIONS DESIGN / BROOKLYN
Skills
End-to-end product delivery / cross-functional collaboration / workshop design and facilitation / user advocacy and empathy / design systems and scalability / strategic thinking and leadership / people management / mentorship
Awards
PEO Digital (Department of the Navy)
Small Team of 1st Quarter / 2019
Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA)
International Design Excellence Award: Transportation / 2010
charity : water
Campaign to watch / 2010
Seattle Show
Silver, Internet Advertising / 2007
Mentorship
& community
UW Human Centered Design
& Engineering
Professional mentor
School of Visual Concepts
UX mentor
General Assembly
UX career day interviewer
The Lamb Center
Volunteer
Miriam’s Kitchen
Volunteer
Union Gospel Mission
Mathematics tutor