Leadership
I'm a design leader and innovator with particular strengths in building vibrant, diverse, and trusting teams while creating needle-moving strategies for the company and its clients or products.
Inclusivity
I ensure that everything from hiring practices to meeting etiquette is rooted in the inclusion of people with different backgrounds, abilities, and personalities.
Transparency
I nurture open, honest communication and collaboration. Always. That applies to employees, co-workers, and clients alike.
Collaboration
I encourage communication where everyone’s viewpoint is elicited and respected. There’s no room for ego or power struggles—best idea in the room wins!
Initiatives
I created and implemented a career growth framework that helped define the skills and mindsets required to advance to more senior roles. It detailed both a manager and an IC track, allowing designers the flexibility to chart their own career path.
This successfully reduced designer anxiety by clearly stating expectations and created more equity by reducing subjectivity regarding promotions.
Growth Framework
I led the creation of UX design patterns in Figma that included detailed guidelines, use cases, and accessibility considerations to ensure the team was delivering exceptional work. We also utilized a checklist that incorporated things like what to ask during kickoff, research prompts, and usability testing reminders.
As a result, project velocity sped up and our delivery ratings from clients increased.
Quality Standards
These were in-depth, subject-specific groups led by designers with expertise in AI, VR, accessibility, content strategy, service design, and workshops. I started them as a way to share knowledge and expand the team’s skills, and under the guild leaders’ guidance, they evolved into monthly sessions that became integral to our team culture.
This became a cornerstone for designers to up-level their skills and expanded the opportunities for leadership across the team.
Design Guilds
This was a bi-weekly meeting of all designers to come together for an open forum where we could answer questions, share business updates, and most importantly, get to know each other. Designers demoed their work, shared stories about personal interests, and discussed whatever was on their minds.
It was a critical piece of establishing our design culture and was one of the things designers loved best about their week.
Design Forum
Without a proper resource management tool, I created processes and trackers to understand who was assigned to what project, when they were rolling off, and what internal efforts they were supporting. It also took into account things like project preferences, timezones, and team size.
This not only helped the team quickly respond to new resourcing needs, but it provided room for us to consider what was right for the designer, not just what the project needed.
Resourcing
I revamped hiring practices to ensure they were inclusive, timely, and transparent. This included talking with many neurodivergent designers to understand what their needs were, implementing new communication templates that clearly outlined expectations, and creating cross-functional interviews that included engineering, product, and more junior designers in the interview process.
By improving both the candidate and recruiting experience, I reduced the effort of screening and shortened the time to hire the right candidate.