Principal Product Designer

2024 - Current

I work with a passionate, tight-knit team of technologists to help advance the tools and technologies that epidemiologists at the CDC use to solve some of our country’s most pressing public health challenges.

Design Manager & Staff Designer
2022 - 2024

I was the design manager for Support (phone, web, chat, AI/ML chatbot, advocate tooling) & previously the concurrent interim manager for Health (access, identity, security, disputes).

I led an international team of senior-level designers who drove trust on the platform using service-oriented design. Our focus was ensuring that our customers could better access support, and our advocates could deliver more meaningful resolutions.

In addition to managing, I was also a staff designer and I balanced my team management with responsibilities for designing across two workstreams.

Prior to leading Support, I initially joined Cash App as the design lead for Transfers and focused on money movement (linking banks, deposits, and withdrawals) and I worked on Instant ACH, automatically adding cash based on a balance, partial authorizations, and instant deposit fee changes.

Staff Designer
2020 - 2022

Senior, and then promoted to Staff Designer on the Risk team within Financial Services at Square. I primarily worked with Banking, Card Issuing and Payroll.

• Designed + shipped security experiences that reduced fraudulent activity across the platform

• Cross-collaborated with senior PMs, design directors, and GMs across our organization to bring attention to high-touch / high-value projects around account health & platform security

• Facilitated a recorded workshop for the Financial Services organization called "Uncovering Opportunities through Service Blueprinting." I outlined the why and what of service design and its artifacts, and how cross-functional teams can use them to strategically inform project work.

Senior UX Strategist
2019 - 2020

Design strategy for Commerce, Growth, and Revenue teams to accelerate Mailchimp's position as the all-in-one marketing platform for small business.

• Commerce: 0-1 foundational design & strategy that shaped the net-new Store product - shipped in 2021

• Growth: Audited the product holistically and developed customer journey maps and service blueprints which identified key experiential misses impacting retention & growth

• Revenue: Designed a win-back / recapture experience to reduce churn during the off-boarding process

Researcher
2017 - 2018

ShootProof is a beautiful platform for independent photographers to host their images and monetize their work by selling paid prints in coordination with a network of high-quality, industry-standard partners. If you've ever had portraits taken for school, engagements, wedding, newborns, family photos, etc., I wouldn't be surprised if ShootProof hosted them.

• Conducted qual & quant research for a media gallery / eComm sales product to validate the direction of a new feature set; i.e., "should the company invest in print packages"

• Built functional prototypes in InVision, facilitated on-site usability tests at two regional tradeshows, moderated virtual usability tests, scheduled and conducted site visits to gain insights through observational research, screened participants, coordinated payouts / incentives for participants

• Created a research repository in Confluence and Airtable, and presented product recommendations stemming from research findings

Senior Designer
2015 - 2016

BetterCloud allows companies like Square, Betterment, ClassPass, Mapbox and others to discover, manage, and secure the applications employees use, reduces IT management, streamlines automation, and reduces costs for organizations of all sizes.

• I led the product design and research for the Directory, Settings, Tools, and Help sections of the platform as we completely redesigned the product.

• Overhauled the product’s design system and created standards, patterns, components and elements

• Built new features with an enhanced focus on accessibility, modern / minimal design and ease of use.

• Articulated the vision for the new customer experience, and conveyed the value of HCD

• Redesigned half of the platform: established the information architecture, created user flows and annotated wireframes, developed prototypes, wrote test scripts and facilitated usability sessions, wrote in-app copy, and completed all detailed designs in Sketch for engineering handoff.

Senior Experience Architect
2014 - 2015

I was the Experience Architect staffed to a team of ~70 who were dedicated to a multi-year vision to overhaul the UX for acquiring multiple lines of insurance.

• Designed and socialized a Customer Journey Map charting the pre-and post-purchase experience, identified pain points & opportunities, and aligned experience principles to triage highest-value touchpoints

• Concurrently staffed to the Design & Visual Template System team that maintained a set of enterprise-wide design and accessibility standards for desktop and mobile to meet a minimum of WCAG 2.0 AA guidelines.

Experience Architect & Strategist
2013 - 2014

Interaction designer for Home Depot’s cart & checkout experience, partnered closely with my visual design partner who turned my flows and frames into PSD files for final delivery.

• Designed and shipped the Appliance Parts and Services Configurator, BODFS (Buy Online Deliver from Store) and BOPIS (Buy Online Pick Up In Store) experiences

• Designed a WCAG-compliant AA-accessible tablet cart & checkout experience

• Partnered with two commerce PMs to continually release experimental tests to cart & checkout

• Created detailed wireframes and built dynamic commerce prototypes in Axure with real-time math, functions & expressions to accurately prototype and test high-price-point appliance sales

• Worked closely with research to deliver aforementioned prototypes for moderated & unmoderated tests; I was awarded our internal "Homer" recognition for rapid prototyping

Manager, Content Strategy
2011 - 2013

Managed the redesign and migration of the company marketing site with our agency partner and wrote marketing copy for ads, landing pages, PR and social media.

• Sourced, hired and managed contractors for corporate videos and communications; crafted briefs and creative direction for marketing videos

• Wrote standalone + supplementary vertical-specific case studies about our clients

• Vendor manager for our PR and SEO firms, and freelance writers and designers

• Partnered with product teams & change management to write and release marketing copy around system features and support.

Content Designer
2010 - 2011

After earning my Masters degree in 2010, I left non-profit work and focused on content, design and strategy. I had been a freelance technical writer while in school, and this was one of the first roles I took that married creative copywriting with tactical SEO and business performance.

• Identified our clients' voice & tone, and then partnered with marketing managers and account executives to write a portfolio of complementary pieces to optimize search performance for clients.

• Crafted technical and creative copy for optimized web and print delivery including: press releases, articles, site content, advertisements, proposals, reports, award submissions, company/author bios, and blog posts for industries spanning healthcare, financial services, defense, IT, hospitality and human services.