In a nutshell:
I'm a Product Design Leader with 18 years of professional experience in holistic product and user experience design, art & creative direction, and web design + engineering in both the US and Japan.
I most recently led and grew teams of UX designers, researchers, and engineers at Nike and Symetra Financial, designing both enterprise and consumer-facing software.
My broad experience as a creative embedded in many different domains— including founding and running an independent design studio— provides future-proof systems thinking to create powerful, easy-to-implement solutions that are tied directly to the goals of the business while centering the user at every step.
The “tell me about yourself” version:
It all started when I was just a kid going in to the office after school with my mom, a senior art director at an ad agency, and she'd sit me down in front of some Photoshop production work (removing red eye, simple layout, etc) to keep me from scribbling with the good Copics. I never looked back; design was in my DNA from the start.
Immediately after earning my degree in Digital Art & Design, I moved to Japan and started my design career in earnest, becoming fluent in Japanese and an expert in Japanese visual design and typography along the way. I got to do really exciting work with large corporations and centuries-old family businesses alike, mentor junior designers, broaden my skillset as a digital designer and full stack developer, and forge a Japanese work ethic — emphasizing a strong sense of responsibility to my team and pride in my craft — that serves me well to this day.
When I moved back to the States, I founded an independent digital creative agency which I ran for 7 years, servicing clients in over a dozen different domains and collecting deep expertise in those spaces along the way. Apart from getting to wear all the hats required to do great work as an entrepreneur, my favorite part was working closely with clients, leadership, and stakeholders to understand their needs, tell their stories effectively, and deliver fantastic results consistently.
More recently, I’ve been leading and growing Product Design teams as a player/coach at Nike and Symetra Financial to create exciting new enterprise tools and consumer-facing software that’s improving the lives of the tens of thousands of people using it every day.