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My professional experience, education, honors, awards, and public speaking.
Aimlabs (formerly Statespace Labs), Vice President · User Experience | 2023-present
Promoted from Senior Director of Platform UX. Responsible for connecting all gaming product experiences within our ecosystem, including:
- Aim Lab trainer Steam (PC)
- Aim Lab mobile trainer (Apple & Android)
- Aimlabs+ subscription
- Aimblox (Roblox)
- Valorant StatsCenter (PC & Web)
- ProGuides (Web)
Recently, I helped launch the first-ever generative AI task engine in Gaming called Discovery (PC/web). It generates custom training, task suggestions, and learning content, based on prompts from the player, and their personal stats.
Aimlabs (formerly Statespace Labs), Senior Director · Platform UX | 2022-2023
Led experience design of multi-product verticals into a single consumer-facing platform experience.
- Reimagined and defined new platform (Aimlabs) that the company will lead with moving forward.
- Partnered in shaping strategy with executive team for multiple roadmaps.
- Led the creation of company’s design system, based on brand refresh.
- Helped ship the company’s first native mobile game (Aim Lab mobile) in Apple & Android stores.
- Ran design sprints for innovation-level projects and facilitated cross-functional workshops.
- Directly responsible for product experiments with the goal to increase retention and revenue.
- Directly managing designers and providing the greater team with mentorship and guidance.
- Created new processes and practices to level up the design and UX functions across the team.
LogicGate, Head of User Experience | 2022
Promoted from Director of Design & Research. I led design & research at LogicGate and was responsible for the overall user experience, both public and product-facing. With this responsibility, I led the product design and user research functions, and was consulted on marketing design. This made me directly responsible for a team of 6 individuals consisting of manager, leads, senior, and associate-level roles across my reports. I was also the creator and product owner for a newly-minted Design System squad, and led the strategy/management and ceremonies of that squad.
LogicGate, Director of Design & Research | 2021-2022
Promoted from Director of Product Design.
- Drove the design principles, strategy, and standards, thereby informing what shipped by proxy.
- Partnered in defining high-level product strategy for the year, aligning with business goals.
- Created career progression tracks for my team of product design and research.
- Collaborated with our Knowledge Services and Support teams to build content strategy.
- Led the initial brand refresh rollout, in partnership with Marketing.
- Led mission critical innovation-level projects of new offerings and channels for the > - business.
- Creator and product owner of Cobalt, LogicGate’s design system (launched in November 2021).
- Created and managed the design system chapter, responsible for the design system.
- Led official accessibility audit, and planning around enablement while shipping new features.
- Continuously hired to meet our goals and responsible for scaling the user research practice.
- Managing the Chapter responsible for our design system, Cobalt (launched in November).
LogicGate, Director of Product Design | 2020-2021
Founding hire for Design within the company, joined Series B and helped take the company to the next level with a Series C $113M round of funding. Tasked with building a Design function from the ground up for a mature, complex product. Initially supported 4 Engineering squads solo and started the Design System Chapter and User Research Panel in my first 90 days. Currently, leading the Design function with a team of 4 Designers spread across the US. Also heading up and launching new product-led growth initiatives and innovation projects. Helped lead the vision, development, and launch one of our industry’s first marketplaces for GRC professionals called the Risk Cloud Exchange. Led the year-long discovery and innovation process through the initial launch of our new risk quantification module called Risk Cloud Quantify.
Draftbit, Director of Product Design | 2019-2020
Draftbit is an early-stage Y Combinator-funded startup (YC W18 cohort). Draftbit is a no-code product that enables customers to build a native mobile app with a visual editor, in your browser. No programming necessary. I was responsible for leading the Design discipline, improving the product experience, and working directly with the founders to find product-market fit and define product strategy. I was also reponsible for the strategy and design of our public-facing brand. I evangelized the use of Design Systems and partnered with the CTO to bring it to life. I started user research practices ranging from user testing, surveys, and interviews.
Cards Against Humanity (Blackbox), Head of Design | 2017-2019
Founded at Cards Against Humanity as the logistics and product delivery platform for Cards, but also served other large games like Myst and Exploding Kittens in addition to 60+ other on-going clients ranging from SMBs to Enterprise. We also served up-and-coming Kickstarter creators. I led the Design Team consisting of UI Engineers and Product Designers that were responsible for both the brand and platform. The platform consisted of multiple user types: support, account, logistics, and clients. I sat on the Board of Directors and was repsonsible for growth from a product strategy standpoint. Also championed the start of our Design System to build more efficiently and create a cohesive user experience. Blackbox has since been acquired by AdMagic.
Home Chef, Director of Product Design | 2016-2017
Promoted from User Experience Lead. Led the product design, marketing design, and research teams. This role was focused on leadership and strategy, focused on scaling for hyper-growth, and partnering closely with Product, Engineering, and Marketing. I continued building a user-centered design practice, providing leadership and vision to my team of design and research. Was made responsible for the complete Home Chef end-to-end product experience, from sign-up, meal-picking, unboxing, and cooking. I also led design for the rebrand and was charged with planning, executing, and shipping the new brand in the matter of months. Also, provided thought leadership around user-centered practices like site teardowns, user testing, card sorting, contextual inquiries, diary studies, and design critiques.
During my tenure, I established the product design and user research practices. Under my leadership I launched a rebrand, optimized tooling for internal teams like operations and culinary. Also during this time, the employee headcount 10X to 1,000+ employees nationwide, opened a third shipping facility in Atlanta, and the company reached $80MM ARR along with the upcoming acquisition by Kroger.
One highlight was leading an innovation-level initiative alongside engineering to improve our Taste Profile recommendation engine to a machine-learning algorithm that improved suggested meals to users and auto-selected meals based on weighting from their dietary restrictions and past meal history. The result was a success, with very few non-critical bugs or customer complaints post-launch of the algorithm.
Home Chef, User Experience Lead | 2015-2016
I joined the company very early (~$10MM ARR, employee #14) around the close of their Series A. During my tenure in this role, we increased ARR to $25MM, increased employee headcount to 80, upgraded to a 50,000sq ft shipping facility, opened a second facility in California, secured a Series B round of funding at $40MM, and became one of the top 3 meal kit delivery startups at that time. Being early in the company’s history, my role entailed quite a bit, but the two big impact projects I led during this time were around sign-up conversion and delivery management.
Competition in the meal kit delivery space was fierce and because of that we were very focused on optimizing our sign-up funnel. We knew to have a substantial lift, we would need to make substantial change. I was charged with leading this effort and conducted research, prototyped, and validated a solution that we shipped as an experiment. The experiment beat the control leading to a 12% lift with high statistical significance.
During this time, we were also focused on improving the experience for our customers. We learned from our customers and Support that there was a lot of confusion with our current delivery management system. I led a complete redesign of the delivery management experience that addressed a lot of UX issues. The change showed long-term proof that the redesign was more intuitive around weekly delivery management. There was also a tangible reduction in meal skips and service pausing, along with an increase in referrals. Support tickets around delivery management confusion dramatically dipped within the first month of launch and stayed down.
workFunc, Founder & CEO | 2012-2015
workFunc, Inc was a full-service design consultancy I started up with the focus on experiential design for websites, web applications, and digital kiosks. I bootstrapped and self-funded workFunc from my previous life as a design consultant, and launched with a great list of partners and clients that I nurtured over the years. workFunc became a profitable company within the first year and continued to be that for the remainder of time that I owned it. It was also the preferred vendor for experience design with AE Marketing Group, Digitas, and Havas Worldwide, to name a few. After 3+ years in the business, I decided to exit and sell the company off to a private buyer.
Some highlights from that time were helping launch Network Health their business into a new geographic market, helping pitch Cracker Barrel on a full website redesign and winning that work, our company website being nominated for Awwwards SOTD, and redesigning the experience for Hyundai’s nationwide dealer-assisted enrollment application.
Design Consultant | 2009-2012
I started consulting at an exciting time where technology really began taking off. During this time I consulted on marketing campaigns, websites, web applications, desktop applications, and even mobile operating systems. Some of these agencies I partnered with included The Marketing Store, Euro RSCG, Havas Worldwide, and 360i, to name a few. During this time, I was involved in some very large-scale projects for clients like McDonald’s, Motorola, Sprint, and Disney, just to name some of the larger accounts.
Some highlights from this time were developing Disney’s John Carter movie website, designing the first-time user experience for the Motorola’s Xoom tablet (pre-launch), and developing a complex custom web application for a joint program between McDonald’s and the 2012 Summer Olympics called the “Champions of Play”.
The Royal Order of Experience Design (Ogilvy), Interactive Design Technologist | 2008-2009
I joined this award-winning Design and UX agency to bridge the gap in-house between design and creative development. During my tenure, I was the lead designer for the NEC website redesign, a key player in the Kohler website redesign, and also worked on the Mozilla, Crate & Barrel, Sub Zero, and Wolf accounts.
I was also part of the team recognized with several esteemed awards and mentions including winning the Webby People’s Voice Award, nominated for another Website Webby Award, and winner of FWA SOTD for Patagonia’s websites, The Footprint Chronicles and The Tin Shed.
RMG Connect (J. Walter Thompson), Creative Development Lead | 2007-2008
Creative Development Lead managing the top accounts of the agency: Nestle, Kraft, and the Illinois Bureau of Tourism. I was responsible and led creative innovation on all interactive and motion-related client work, partnering directly with our main Creative Director. This included storyboarding, prototyping, and directing more junior team members and freelancers from concept to development.
Draftfcb (FCB), Digital Art Director | 2003-2007
Actively directed and participated in creative design efforts from strategy to delivery. During my tenure, I directly managed multiple accounts totaling over $80M with clients such as Kellog’s, Twix, USPS, CVS, and many more. I was responsible for managing and leading projects around digital marketing campaigns, promotional web applications, and direct marketing websites.
During this time I was recognized with several esteemed industry awards, including a Gold Reggie for promotions, and 1st Place in the CADM Tempo Awards for email marketing.
D3SIGNLAB, Web Designer | 2002-2004
The Illinois Institute of Art at Chicago (AAS, Multimedia Design 2002)