Three truths about me; latest work history plus how I've helped the design community.
TRUTH #1
At Instacart I pitched and got funding for two projects—Landing Page System and Growth Platform. One helped us create 50,000+ SEO pages, the other redesigned our organization to help the company save estimated 100s of millions from projected marketing spend. Image below—offsite for the Growth Platform team that has grown from 2 people jamming on this idea (me and a PM) to a team of 70+ across several orgs.
Led multiple sprints to reimagine how DashPass shows up at the forefront and educates customers about their benefits. Tactically this led us to refresh the brand from teal to purple, but more importantly it shifted the organization's mindset that attribution matters.
TRUTH #2
Across my time at DoorDash and Instacart, I've stepped in multiple times to mentor, grow and support my team when Design Management was absent. I helped organize the work we should be doing, ran crits, bridged gaps with cross-functional partners and mentored designers on how to promote and present their work in broader forums.
When one of my PMs left the team I stepped in to organize brainstorms and pulled in cross-functional domain experts to inform our roadmap. For one of the big-bet projects I helped pitch, I stepped in to organize the work, ran standups with engineering to keep it on track and resolve issues.
TRUTH #3
Throughout the last decade+ of my tenure I ran crits and workshops, teaching design tools and methods to cross-functional stakeholders. I've mentored several designers along the way to help them fine-tune their work and how they show up.
Outside of work I keynoted the Boston UXPA in May 2021 to 100 attendees, and spoke at Andi Galpern's Career Design Network event. I've written books to help designers put their best foot forward when it comes to landing that dream design job.
In 2021 taught a remote Design Portfolio Course to 9 grad school students at University of Maryland. 15 hours, 6 weeks
I am an IC leader on the DashPass team, growing our membership base and making DashPass the best it can be for millions of its members.
My first real taste of hyper-growth, coming in as the only designer on the Consumer experience team.
Worked at a number of startups that tended to grow fast and crash hard. Learned to navigate chaos and ambiguity. Enjoyed working on different tech form factors like Google Glass.
Went back to school at Carnegie Mellon University to learn design the proper way.
All that matters is the friends we made along the way and how we helped each other on the journey.
Thank you so much for developing a comprehensive 2 hour Content Design-friendly Figma training for our Team Jam. It was a pleasure working with you—all I had to do was give you some prompts and you really ran with it.
I hope you heard all the "ooohs" and "awwws" from the team and their delight in discovering all sorts of tricks and things to uplevel their Figma fluency.
A comprehensive job search guide for Product Designers and UX Designers: uncover your superpowers, build your portfolio, ace design interviews, and negotiate your final offer.
Combines time-tested knowledge of how to ace UX design exercises such as whiteboards, app crits, and take-home assignments.
