15-year designer, 10-year design manager

I’m a “player’s coach,” completely crazy about inclusion, design systems, information architecture, content strategy, documentation, and cross-functional collaboration.

Leadership

For the past ten years of my 15-year career, I have been directly managing designers, content writers, and front-end engineers.

The largest number of direct reports I’ve managed hands-on is 12, with hundreds of indirect reports. Most recently, at Microsoft, I managed four to six direct reports at different career stages, from intern to principal.

I’m a natural servant leader, and my study of leadership methodology has given me tools (from Fieldler’s contingency model and path-goal theory) which enable me to tune my management style in real time based on the situation at hand. For example, early-career designers benefit from hands-on coaching throughout the delivery process, while more-autonomous designers benefit from less coaching and more modelling, often needing only one major dose of clarity at the beginning of the requirements-gathering phase, followed by regular check-ins to share updates, work through blockers, and ensure consistent and satisfying customer journeys. By starting with a strong, inclusive culture built on psychological safety, rigorous critique, and collaboration, I empower everyone in my care with the coaching, relationships, assets, information, and focus time they need to be successful within often-ambiguous requirements.

Process

I find clarity by maintaining thorough documentation, a thoughtful design system, and regular cross-functional check-ins. I drive progress in the face of ambiguity by working with product team leadership to identify gaps in our understanding, then working with the research team to translate those gaps into both qualitative and quantitative studies to eradicate blockers and get our design and product teams the information we need to make a useful product. I work with research teams to craft participant screeners with surgical precision, write realistic scenarios, build prototypes, and deploy studies and surveys to segment user personas, inform content strategy, and define our product’s rightful place in the market.

At Microsoft, I worked with the research team to implement quick surveys and studies crafted to answer specific questions for our product team with on-the-fly data reports that informed mid-sprint design work and eliminated blockers as they occurred.

Within my two-year stint at Microsoft, our findings steered the entire product vision onto a completely new paradigm: from an IOT-connected device telemetry platform to a modern customer data platform (CDP).

That product evolution necessitated a massive design system audit, leading us to create and deploy a net-new design system in Figma to support our entire product suite.

Previously, I launched 27 individual software products within 18 months as a consultant at People Tech Group, from brand-new start-up consumer applications to massive enterprise platforms, from ERP to EHR. I have my team, tools, and design process to credit for pulling off this miracle.

Craft

I create materials for my team that drive quality and align visual designers and content writers on engaging and informative concepts. I’m ready to nerd out with you about aesthetics, color theory, trend cycles, and typography. I’ll also go deep with you about the merits of quantitative, qualitative, and contextual research. Before quarantine, I lectured broadly about WCAG 2.1 and Section 508, advocating for inclusive design that exceeds regulatory “compliance.”