About
⚡️ Passionate about humane technology, identity, and communities in web3 and AI/ML for good ⚡️
I'm a growth- and people-driven Product Design Leader with 8 years of experience working on remote and distributed teams—designing end-to-end products ranging from all things consumer to enterprise security, identity, B2B SaaS, AI/ML, and web3.
Beyond leading design at early-stage start-ups, I also advise for VC-backed early-stage startups across all verticals which include but aren't limited to: AI/ML, web3, healthcare, dev tooling, and future of work. My advising work has spanned across recruiting and hiring (first designers), crafting design strategy and product development processes, and providing product design and user research as a service.
Having grown up in a design-oriented household with a web designer mother, one of the early digital creatives in the 1990s, design-thinking has shaped and cultivated my passion for creative innovations and problem-solving. I'm grateful to be able to combine my three loves—design, technology, and culture—to create digital products that allow for free forms of individual self-expression and innovation for the greater good.
Projects
Owned and led product and design for Elsewhere, a VC-backed startup that created metaverse experiences for web3 communities.
Owned and led an end-to-end UX research study for Souq, a new VC-backed DeFi crypto product. I was responsible for research ops, script writing, recruitment, conducting moderated interviews, and analysis.
Designed Lil Block Party, Lil Nouns DAO's first external product, as the only designer on a small team. LBP was designed, built, and shipped in less than 2 weeks. Since its launch in late September, it has brought in over 35Ξ to the DAO treasury.
Speaking
Gave two talks as a speak for the Design Track at ETHDenver #CampBUIDL 2023
Interviewed as the featured guest on the 5-star "What is UX?" podcast, hosted by Pek Pongpaet (Impekkable). I shared my design journey and discussed topics such as networking, advocating for yourself, culture-building on remote teams, and the gender pay gap.
Spoke on a panel around collaboration alongside design leaders around the world.
Features
Workspaces is a beautiful collection of desk setups from creative individuals that was created by Ryan Gilbert.
Being a career-shifter, I was interviewed by Invision for their Inside Design blog to share tips for aspiring designers seeking to break into the tech industry.
Interviewed by Designlab when I was working both as a design mentor for their UX Academy Bootcamp as well as their in-house mentor community lead.
Work Experience
Commonwealth is an all-in-one platform for on-chain communities to discuss, vote, and fund projects together. Serving on the leadership team, actively participating in strategic decisions, and driving forward the vision of design's pivotal role in an engineering-first organization.
• Owned the establishment and management of a comprehensive design system, ensuring consistent and cohesive experiences across projects. Executed a robust UX research study to strengthen relationships with Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs), enhance their positive sentiment towards Commonwealth, and prevent churn.
• Engineered a transformative shift within an EPD organization lacking defined product-development frameworks, pioneering the establishment of a thriving product and design function. Orchestrated the successful execution of multiple projects, prioritizing Information Architecture (IA) and User Experience (UX) to craft fluid end-to-end user journeys.
• Instituted processes to enhance collaboration between design and engineering teams. Implemented tools like Asana for task management, ensuring alignment across departments. Launched company-wide and project-specific retrospectives to foster continuous improvement.
• Architected various product and design templates that amplified clarity within product requirement documentation, while also trailblazing the implementation of a Design Quality Assurance (QA) process to meticulously validate design precision during implementation.
• Championed the inception of a comprehensive User Experience Research (UXR) function, curating tools, templates, and spearheading flagship research endeavors to glean invaluable user insights.
• Achieved promotion for direct report by pioneering end-to-end product development process and establishing a robust and growing design function.
Okta is the leading independent identity provider. Leading consumer design, for Okta Personal, their first consumer offering; working on a cross-functional team of 20+ from EPD to Marketing.
• Led product and design from 0 to 1 for Compass, an internal platform created alongside the Data & Insights team, for all customer-facing teams which automated data through integrations with Salesforce, Tableau, and Snowflake. Quarterly increase of 400 DAUs through organic growth.
• Wrote the plan, scripts, and ran UX research studies without taking time away from UX Researchers who are working on larger projects.
• Designed Okta's first consumer product—Okta Personal—across all devices including desktop, mobile web, native mobile, and browser plugin.
Lilt is the leading AI solution for enterprise translation.
• Co-leading cross-team initiatives to create, develop, and implement our first accessibility-driven design system.
• Redesigned and launched a new CAT (computer-assisted translation) editor to improve the general user experience for our network of linguists. Reduced cost margin, as linguists are paid hourly, by increasing translation speed from 146 to 200 words per hour.
15Five is a performance management platform and that drives business results by integrating robust employee, manager, coaching, and training solutions into one platform. Successfully launching improvements for end-user facing products: Check-ins, 1:1s, High Fives, and Question Bank.
• Led product design and research for a highly requested feature, Request Feedback. Only feature launched in the quarter—reduced “sales lost due to feature gaps” by 75% according to our quarterly sales survey.
Designed on eBay's B2C Selling team. I specifically focused on "Listings" and crafted a new selling experience within eBay's Selling platform (Seller Hub)—leveraging AI for the creation of a new product catalog as a means to streamline selling for legacy sellers.
Reddit is a network of more than 100,000 communities where people can dive into anything through experiences built around their interests, hobbies and passions. Responsible for redesigning profiles for creators, and increased creator profile pinning by 25% within the first month of launch.
• Designed and launched experimental new products, Reddit News and Reddit Events (and Collections), to improve the categorization and discovery of Reddit content.
Gigster is a smart software development service that combines top developers, designers and
product managers with artificial intelligence to build specific projects.
• Projects: (1) a native hospitality product for an international client; (2) a social-based health tech desktop application; (3) a media/content publishing desktop platform; (4) a social media e-commerce consumer-facing native app as well as accompanying backend/internal desktop tools.
Volunteering
First Round Fast Track is a three-month-long mentorship program that matches seasoned startup leaders with early-stage founders and team members for 1:1 mentorship.
Advised and mentored 2 pods of aspiring technologists—each with 1 Product Manager, 1 Product Designer, and 2 Developers—as they ideated, designed, built, and launched a digital product in 8 weeks.
Education
Chief Design Officer School creates brave, strategic design leaders and operators who get alignment, make better decisions and increase value—without losing their souls.
Was a part of the inaugural On Deck Designers fellowship program, which has been rebranded to Coho. Mastering the art of design leadership amongst some of the best design leaders in the world.
Certifications
Designing Stories is an introductory workshop to persuading stakeholders at all levels through compelling stories that inspire action.
Business Value of Design is an interactive workshop where you'll learn the language, mindsets, and tools you need to communicate the business value of your work.