Over 15+ years in design leadership, I've learned that the most transformative products emerge when you build teams obsessed with understanding real human needs.
I specialize in building high-performing design teams from the ground up—whether scaling from 0-13 designers at CBS Sports or mentoring 7 designers across Amazon's complex internal ecosystem. My approach centers on creating design cultures where business success flows naturally from deep empathy and genuine care for the people using our products.
The designer's role has evolved dramatically, but our core superpower remains unchanged: translating complex business requirements into experiences that feel effortless, meaningful, and emotionally resonant for humans. Whether someone is trying to find the perfect recipe after a long day, following their favorite team through a crucial game, or connecting smart technology to your physical workspace, great design makes technology disappear so human connection can flourish.
Customer-Centric Team Culture
Teams I've built consistently deliver measurable impact: YoY CSAT improvements at Amazon, 52% business growth at Hana, and scaling CBS Sports to the #2 digital sports brand. This success stems from one philosophy: put customer insights at the center of everything we create.
My teams don't just research users; we use ethnographic research, journey mapping, and continuous user feedback loops to uncover needs customers can't articulate themselves. We become advocates for their unspoken needs and champions of their emotional journey with our products.
I approach team leadership the same way I approach design: everything is connected, and the details of human experience matter immensely. Just as thoughtful interaction design considers how each micro-moment builds toward emotional connection, I structure 1:1s, team reviews, and career development conversations to understand how each designer's growth directly enhances our collective ability to serve customers.
Creating an environment where designers can grow means fostering curiosity about human behavior, encouraging experimentation with new ways to solve customer problems, and celebrating when we discover insights that unlock better experiences. I believe in building diverse teams where different perspectives on human experience strengthen our collective ability to design for everyone.
Having partnered with executive leadership across Amazon, CBRE, and CBS, I ensure customer voice influences every business decision by translating user insights into language that resonates with revenue, retention, and growth metrics. The goal isn't just to have design "at the table" – it's to ensure customer voice is heard in every business decision.
Products That Transform Human Experience
Rooted in a background of making things with my hands – art, music, furniture – I learned early that the right tools should feel like natural extensions of human intention. Every project I'm most proud of has measurably improved someone's daily life:
Reconnecting people with meaningful work through tech-enabled spaces that removed friction and inspired creativity, resulting in 52% business growth through enhanced human experience (Hana Workspaces)
Empowering 1.5M+ employees with AI-powered tools that feel intuitive and reduce cognitive load, improving engagement and manager effectiveness (Amazon)
Helping people discover health and wellness through digital experiences that made complex medical information accessible and actionable for 55+ million monthly users (Health.com)
Enabling teachers to truly see every student through learning platforms that transformed real-time assessment from administrative burden into educational insight (Amplify Education)
Helping busy people find something to make for dinner or a special meal for a family gathering with a quick and easy-to-use app with the world’s best recipes (Epicurious)
Each project succeeded because we started with deep customer research, translated insights into design principles, and measured impact on actual human outcomes – not just business KPIs.
Design Craft & Systems Thinking
Leadership in design requires more than vision—it demands deep craft expertise that earns credibility with both teams and stakeholders. Understanding the relationship between user needs, technical constraints, and business objectives is fundamental to creating experiences that truly resonate.
Great design is invisible until it's missing. This principle drives my obsession with craft mastery—the deep understanding of design principles, tools, and technologies that transforms complex ideas into experiences that feel effortless. When guiding AI-enhanced workflows for Amazon's 1.5M employees, every micro-interaction had to reduce cognitive load, not add to it. When creating mobile-first health experiences for 55+ million users, the visual hierarchy needed to make critical health information instantly accessible during moments of anxiety. This attention to detail isn't perfectionism—it's recognition that quality craftsmanship builds the trust users need to engage authentically with our products.
The most elegant solutions emerge when you see the whole system, not just its parts. Every interface decision creates ripple effects across the user's entire journey, which is why I approach design challenges with a holistic, end-to-end view in mind. At Hana, integrating IoT sensors with mobile apps and smart building technology required understanding how a single interaction—checking into a workspace—connected to facilities management, user preferences, space optimization, and company culture. When one element changed, everything else needed to adapt gracefully. This systems perspective reveals opportunities that component-level thinking misses entirely.
Technology systems are living organisms that evolve constantly, and design must evolve with them. I've learned to embrace dynamic complexity as a creative constraint rather than a burden. Managing multi-surface experiences across CBS Sports' six product offerings taught me that sustainable design systems aren't rigid frameworks—they're adaptive languages that grow stronger through use. By creating shared mental models among design, product, engineering, and business stakeholders, we can anticipate how changes will propagate through the system and turn potential friction points into moments of unexpected delight. The goal isn't to control complexity, but to evolve with it in ways that consistently serve human needs.