Mitch Daniels

Mitch Daniels

Principal Product Designer in Durham, NC, he / him

About

Principal product designer in Durham, NC with over 10 years experience crafting vision, rallying stakeholders, and charting a course from chaos to clarity. I've worked at agencies, startups, and in B2B SaaS enterprises and am proud to have:

  • Improved complex B2B tools in spaces such as insurance and sports ops

  • Launched 0 → 1 products in fast-moving, high-stakes environments

  • Built team-wide trust and alignment with clear, thoughtful communication

  • Continuously leveled up my craft in both visual design and code

I thrive when tackling hard problems with passionate, curious teammates. I explore widely, prototype early, iterate obsessively and balance long-term strategic vision with tactical execution.

I’ve found fulfilment as both individual contributor and manager and am open to Lead+ IC roles that allow me to coach more junior team members.

Let's chat!

Projects

Ongoing
Product North Star at Zinnia

Charting the course from decades-old legacy systems to a single, unified insurance hub that empowers carriers, agents, and customers

2021

Designed industry-leading compliance tool for student-athletes and athletic departments to coincide with the launch of the NIL era in college sport. Used across 200+ athletic departments and 100K+ active student-athletes.

2020

Real-time digital status boards for display in athletic offices and locker rooms.

Work Experience

2023 — Now
Principal Product Designer at Zinnia (acquired Policygenius)
2021 — Now
Lead Designer at Policygenius
Durham, NC

Lead the design of Umbrella, Pg's bespoke CRM. Established shared vision, fostered alignment across functional teams and business lines, and shipped numerous business-critical features.

2021 — 2021
Durham, NC

Hired and managed a growing design team. Embedded with newly acquired company, INFLCR, to establish design system and go-to-market features for industry-leading NIL exchange serving 70K+ athletes.

2019 — 2021
Durham, NC

Led design through refactor of enterprise SaaS platform. Partnered with PMs and engineers across six squads to concept, iterate, and launch dozens of product updates. Coached junior PMs to streamline process and improve outcomes under tight constraints.

2017 — 2019
Product Designer at Viget
Durham, NC

Designed robust dashboards, reporting interfaces, and operation hubs for financial analysts, non-profits, and real-estate firms. Organized four company hackathons, launching eight successful projects.

2012 — 2015
Data Analyst at Viget
Falls Church, VA

Leveraged qual and quant data to inform design and maximize business outcomes for brands such as Puma, ESPN, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Valspar Paint, and Wildlife Conservation Society.

2010 — 2012
Analyst at LMI
McLean, VA

Analyzed the cost drivers and impact of the Department of Defense's $20B+ annual corrosion-related maintenance spend.

Side Projects

2022

Twilight Imperium is *the ultimate* board game experience, typically lasting 8 - 12 hours. Using Svelte, I put together a lightweight turn indicator to help my group stay on track whenever we play.

2020

When COVID-19 hit, my buddies and I were forced to move our weekly Dungeons & Dragons game online. Existing digital tabletops were over-complicated and clunky, so I tried hacking one together.

I didn't get it quite functional enough for us to use, but it served as a great introduction to websockets, Firebase, and working with the canvas.

2017

A tongue-in-cheek hackathon homage to a galaxy, far, far away. I pitched the idea and wrote content.

2016

Network graph visualizations of my favorite card game, showing how often specific cards were used together. Built with R, Python, and Gephi.

2013

Used a barcode scanner, Raspberry Pi, and the Google Analytics Real-Time Reporting API to track soda consumption in the office.

Education

Speaking

2019

An overview of D&D, including its history, rules, problematic elements, and recent resurgence in pop culture.

2017
Charlottesville, VA

Digital analytics strategy for higher education and libraries

2016

An overview of the game of Go and a preview of the groundbreaking match between AI and a top-ranked player. (Spoiler alert: AI won)

2016

An annual overview of the state of the web. Delivered at every annual retreat from 2012 through 2018.

2015
Washington D.C.

Data visualization best practices for UX designers

LinkedIn