Resume

Experienced “hands on” mixed-methods UX Strategist & Product Design Leader specializing in complex 0-to-1 solutions for highly regulated, data-heavy industries.

For 10+ years I've worked with cross-functional teams to take complex problems, break them down into feasible requirements, and provide clear product direction, enabling industry leadership and strategic innovation by delighting users while reducing the risks inherent in doing something new.

Core competencies include: 0-to-1 MVP design, 1-to-N Optimization Design, User-Centered Design (UCD), Stakeholder Management, Team Leadership and Management, Cross-Functional Collaboration, UX Research, Ideation, Proof-of-Concept (POC), AI and Machine-Learning, Requirements Mapping, Project Planning, UX Product Strategy, Product Management, Content Strategy, UX Recruiting and Mentoring, Rapid Prototyping, Usability Testing, Accessibility and Localization, OKR / KPI / Metrics Mapping, Requirements Prioritization, UX Governance, Design Frameworks.

UX Strategy Advising & AI / Machine-Learning Up-Skilling

Independent Consulting

(Sept. 2024 - Current)

• Implemented custom UX strategies for product initiatives serving civic technology and financial clients, while deepening my established knowledge of AI and Machine-Learning technologies.
• Led a cross-functional 0-to-1 design initiative for an AI-enabled ServiceNow implementation for city support representatives to investigate, record, and cross-reference issues to deliver rapid solutions for residents.
• Provided design strategy expertise to a cross-functional team to establish a 1-to-N product optimization plan for an enterprise B2C financial services product with over 100,000 daily users.
• Completed courses from MIT Open Learning addressing advanced concepts of AI technologies for new product capabilities, and audited 3rd party AI products for UX design process streamlining.
• Collaborated with stakeholders, subject-matter experts, and call center representatives to develop comprehensive experience and ecosystem maps for a product strategy that reduced call times by 50%, and increased first-call issue resolution by 30%.
• Organized observed usability audit issues into a Nielsen Norman matrix, prioritized issues using analytics and customer service data, and produced redesigns with accessibility improvements, accelerated user workflows, and reduced support costs.
• Developed a keen understanding of AI models, capabilities, and 3rd party products, resulting in greater product design capabilities within a streamlined design process.

Senior UX Strategist & Team Lead

AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals

(April 2023 - July 2024)

• Promoted to UX player-coach role to build and mentor teams for tier 1 projects, while establishing best-practices for UX governance and integration across the wider organization.
• Formed a new UX project team to conduct research, design, and optimization activities for new C-Suite performance measurement software.
• Spearheaded several critical med-tech projects (B2B cancer diagnosis tool, AI monitoring for drug production) through custom UX strategies to collaboratively ideate, plan, and deliver designs while keeping stakeholders invested and informed.
• Led the UX Team’s contribution to new company-wide processes and practices for product development within the multinational IT organization.
• Recruited internal and 3rd party UX teammates (Kin+Carta, Turnberry), and established design cadence through collaborative workshops, ideation sessions, and design reviews to provide guidance, support, and accountability.
• Facilitated shared discovery activities (primary research, Nielsen Norman usability reviews, analytics, etc.) to uncover opportunities and pain-points, determine individual project strategies for feasible delivery, and set expectations for team performance.
• Provided detailed planning and design deliverables that enabled rapid MVP delivery (4 weeks ahead of schedule), established future project milestones, and delivered a “green light” pitch to stakeholders for AI features that increased efficiencies by 300%.
• Conducted collaborative cross-functional research, established ongoing feedback sessions, and championed governance improvements to international leadership, highlighting human-centered design approaches and relevant performance metrics.

• Directly recruited to provide human-centered design expertise, creative problem-solving, and business-feasible design approaches for multiple product initiatives within healthcare and pharmaceutical spaces.
• Advised and provided design expertise for several teams on varied projects (Pharma logistical software, risk forecasting engine, sales rep app support), and formulating strategic approaches to account for business constraints.
• Created and delivered comprehensive instructor-led courses that familiarized participants with the key aspects and capabilities of UX Design, and how they empowered project teams through cross-disciplinary collaboration.
• Led a 3rd party team (Deloitte) in the design and deployment of critical inventory tracking systems by establishing a cadence of design workshops, design sprints, and review activities with all project stakeholders and participants.
• Established collaborative strategies (Lean/Agile, data-driven, research-based, rapid prototyping) with product teams, subject-matter experts, and stakeholders to set project scope and milestones, prioritize requirements, and produce detailed prototypes/deliverables.
• Products resulted in lessened time to market (20% for logistics project), increased usage with shortened task times (50% and 80%, respectively, for risk forecasting), increased sales call volume (sales rep support app), and increased sales (B2C vaccine website).
• Led seminars, lectures, and “lunch and learn” sessions for more than 500 multinational IT professionals across the organization, which increased requests for UX Team help with current projects by 30% and established a pipeline for earlier project consultations.
• Provided expertise for needed WCAG “AA” and WAI-ARIA accessibility standards, established weekly design reviews and feedback, resulting in exceeding the stated redesign goals 6 weeks ahead of schedule with a %300 increase in product usage (first 6 months).

Interim UX Associate Director

Lexis Nexis

(Dec. 2021 - May 2022)

• Promoted to hybrid leadership-contributor role to expand, mentor, and retain the existing team, further enhancing UX design capabilities and governance in the fast-paced intellectual property division.
• Grew the UX Team and its capabilities through internal and 3rd party recruitment, guidance, and mentoring while managing project timelines and resources.
• Provided guidance for UX best-practices, feasible product strategies, and promoted active collaboration between product teams.
• Spearheaded both internal and 3rd party recruitment processes to expand the capabilities of the UX Team, and provided ongoing mentorship, guidance, and difficulty-ramped projects to streamline workflows and increase teammates’ confidence.
• Introduced stakeholder information sessions, cross-team collaborative sessions, and “lunch and learn” events to champion collaboration across disciplines, resulting in increased project synergy and efficiencies.

• Created and implemented custom strategic UX design approaches for industry-leading SaaS products across several different regions and markets in the IP (intellectual property) space.
• Modernized the flagship SaaS product via an updated Design System (providing localization features for international markets), and provided those integrations for the wider family of supporting IP products.
• Utilized a data-driven design approach (analytics & customer feedback) to identify pain points, introduced redesigned sections via an updated Design System (to meet WCAG “AA” standards), localization requirements, and WAI-ARIA standards.
• User journeys and workflows were significantly streamlined resulting in increased efficiencies, reduced task times, and increased product adoption (via international market expansion and USPTO adoption).

Native App Projects, Design Volunteering, & Up-Skilling

Undergoing U.S. Immigration

(July 2020 - Apr. 2021)

• Identified and completed self-directed efforts to hone Lean/Agile UX strategy skills, contribute knowledge-sharing and guidance to the local product design community, and further enhance my front-end development skills.
• Designed a revolutionary native application (iOS, Android, & Apple Watch) to streamline identified pain-points with the public transit experience, while providing additional revenue streams for those organizations.
• Completed a comprehensive selection of courses (PHP, MySQL, and cPanel) to further expand my collaborative design skills, increase my design literacy, and produce a bespoke portfolio website from scratch.
• Volunteered with local UX/Content Strategy meet-ups to create a comprehensive content library for local and international members.
• Conducted initial market and user research to identify opportunities, craft a viable product strategy, rapidly iterate with high-fidelity prototypes, and create finished deliverables for use in the ongoing patenting process.
• Determined additional design requirements for an enhanced portfolio website, produced custom production code with sever-side integrations, and tested all new elements (mobile-first framework, custom search, and communications channels).
• Recorded, edited, and posted over 100 hours of expert-led seminars, lectures, and Q&A sessions to provide on-demand access to industry-leading trends, techniques, and perspectives via several online platforms (YouTube & Vimeo).

UX Strategy & Product Design Lead

Independent School Management

(Feb. 2019 - June 2020)

• Promoted to Product Team Lead to oversee product design initiatives across the company that included 0-to-1 design MVP and 1-to-N optimization projects in both B2B and B2C spaces.
• Worked collaboratively to develop a detailed UX strategy for the flagship SaaS product, share findings with executive stakeholders, mitigate risk by mapping out release milestones, and increase project team capabilities through coaching and mentorship.
• Optimized the existing survey product line by designing a massively accelerated workflow using updated technologies, while introducing a completely new series of customizable, automated products.
• Designed and presented stakeholders with a Salesforce integration plan to create a more cohesive set of internal workflows and efficiencies.
• Led collaborative design sprints to conceptualize, design, and test high-fidelity prototypes with existing and potential users, leading to a 50% reduction in task times, increased measured satisfaction, reduced upkeep costs, and produced a 10% increase in marketshare (in the first 6 months).
• Designed a new process to streamline the production of manually-curated surveys (reducing production time by 80%), and automated those capabilities for use in user-configurable products for an overall 300% revenue increase across the product line.
• Produced a comprehensive company “vertical” analysis paired with a detailed “ecosystem map” to uncover insights for designing new integrations between departments that reduced duplicate work by over 85%.

• Delivered a comprehensive solution roadmap for the ground-up redesign of the company’s flagship SaaS product, and advocated for potential design approaches with company ownership and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Conducted research with stakeholders, subject-matter experts, and product team members to understand critical needs across multiple audiences, and organized ideation sessions to align those project requirements to current feasibility constraints.
• Provided a full research summary that included user interviews, customer feedback, and detailed analytics to identify user needs and context, provided a full competitive analysis, and formulated a product-specific strategy for design and development.
• Re-centered product direction for an initiative that had been idling for over a year, and laid out a comprehensive milestone-based product strategy with feature prioritization, and estimated effort and costs for each iterative release.

Primary Research, User Interviewing, Diary Studies, Longitudinal Studies, Surveys, Classification, Clustering, Ethnographic Research, Secondary Research, Literature Study, Analytics, Feedback Analysis, Multiphase Research, Mixed Methods Research, User Story Mapping, Affinity Mapping, Information architecture, Lean / Agile UX, Waterfall UX, Hybrid UX, Card Sorting, Tree Testing, Site Mapping, User Flows, Content Strategy, Axure RP, Figma, Sketch, A/B & Multivariate Testing, Usability Testing, SEO, Design Systems, Style Guides, Power BI, ServiceNow, Horizon Design System, Salesforce, Lightening Design System, SharePoint, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, cPanel, WCAG, WAI-ARIA.