Experience

NewRetirement, Head of Design

August 2020 - Present | Remote

Leads design at NewRetirement to help better align the products and services with customers in order to grow the company and provide a best-in-class financial planning experience.

Responsibilities include:

  • Establishing a set of design processes and tools at a 10-year old company that has never had a dedicated designer.

  • Growing design team to support the business as it scales.

  • Earning trust of key stakeholders and helping them understand the value of design.

  • Establishing and running UX research practices in order to deepen understanding of customer needs.

  • Recruiting an agency to rebrand the company and managing the rollout of the new brand.

  • Evaluating existing product and identifying highest impact areas to start redesigning then developing a roadmap to overhaul design debt.

  • Contributing to company and product strategy including design and helping to build Series A deck.

  • Brainstorming, designing and iterating product features based on key metrics.

  • Identifying key experiments to run in order to learn rapidly and ensure the product is optimally designed.

  • Creating a flexible, modular, scalable, responsive design system to enable easy changes and quick experimentation.

Freelance, Experience & Product Design Director

November 2019 - April 2020 | NEW YORK, NY

Primarily worked at Method (design studio) to develop top-notch, innovative products and experiences. Manage and mentor creative teams to produce best-in-class work. Deliver on business objectives through design.

Sumday, Head of Product Design & Creative

August 2014 – November 2019 | New york, NY

Led the product design and creative team, which included interaction/UX, visual/UI, communications designers as well copywriters.

Responsibilities included:

  • Building a culture and processes that allowed the team to craft quality experiences that also adhered to compliance, legal, and technical regulations and requirements.

  • Implementing and maintaining brand guidelines across multiple state plans.

  • On-boarding, training, managing, and mentoring a team of designers and copywriters.

  • Building and driving consensus around design solutions with internal and external stakeholders.

  • Managing marketing and communication strategy & deliverables.

  • Driving the strategic vision for the product experience.

  • Overseeing the development of a modular, reusable, responsive, and accessible design system.

  • Collaborating with other departments (tech, product management, QA, business analysis, operations, call center) to ensure features are implemented correctly.

  • Ushering team through 2 pivots.

Freelance, Experience/Product Designer

March 2013 – August 2014 | NEW YORK, NY

Clients included: Timehop, Publicis Worldwide, Tribal DDB, Beyond, MRY, IBM, M&C Saatchi. From October 2013–May 2014 I helped launch the pilot version of Sumday while at MRY.

Pave, Lead Product Designer

NOVEMBER 2012 – MARCH 2013 | NEW YORK, NY

Led the product design efforts for Pave.com. Assisted team with launching their pilot site and establishing the look and feel of their brand.

AKQA , Senior User Experience Designer

JULY 2008 – NOVEMBER 2012 | NEW YORK, NY

Concepted and designed human-centric brand and product experiences. Created meaningful and fresh content strategies for technology, fashion and retail clients. Lead the UX efforts for Calvin Klein, Google, Safeway and Celebrity Cruises.

RIT Finance & Administration Division, Designer

APRIL 2006 – FEBRUARY 2008 | ROCHESTER, NY

Designed marketing materials, branding, websites and campaigns for a variety of departments on campus. 

 

Education

Rochester Institute of Technology, BFA New Media Design & Imaging

2004 – 2008 | ROCHESTER, NY

Minor: Art History, Activities: New Media Club

Skills

  • product design

  • UX/UI design

  • design leadership

  • mentorship

  • creative direction

  • information architecture

  • prototyping

  • usability

  • accessibility

  • strategy

  • user and design research

  • design systems

  • branding

  • storytelling and presenting

  • content strategy

  • concepting

  • graphic design

  • typography

  • illustration

  • icon design