Highly motivated self-starter, leader, and designer with a passion for human-centered design. Specialties: Leadership, Hiring for Growth, Design Thinking, Product Development, Design Strategy, User Experience, Information Architecture, Research, Service Design, Interaction Design, Prototyping, Mobile (iOS and...
Experience
2020 — Now
San Francisco Bay Area
With over 90 million members, Goodreads helps people find books they love and get more out of reading. The largest online catalog of books powered by an incredible community of readers.
I lead a talented team of product designers, visual designers, and user researchers focused on delivering value and improving the customer experience across all surfaces.
2017 — 2020
2017 — 2020
Getaround, a global carsharing platform, empowers people to carshare everywhere. Tackling new mobility challenges by utilizing existing resources and supporting entrepreneurship.
I helped grow the company by 5x, bringing carsharing to millions of customers across the US and Europe. I managed a team of 5 product designers in San Francisco and led design initiatives with our design team in Paris. I established processes, workflows, and tooling that enabled the organization to scale. Over the years, I filled leadership gaps in product management and brand. I helped hire across product management and engineering while growing the design organization.
Accomplishments: Grew the design team from 2 to 5 as acting head of design and then 9 to 12 as head of design. Established a culture of design and collaboration across 3 verticals: Research, Product, and Brand. Led foundations and processes for a global design system.
Focus: Design leadership, hiring for growth, team building, performance management, design strategy, product design, research, product development, user journey mapping, facilitating design sprints, product road mapping
2007 — 2019
2007 — 2019
Seattle, Washington
As a founding member, I established an LLC in 2007 with 4 artists to create an artist live/work housing community with the goal to occupy and build out 10 units in a previously unlivable historic building, The Old Rainier Brewery.
At the time, artist housing was scarce and those who did have housing or studio space were at risk of loosing it to high priced rents and new construction as the city of Seattle continued to go though major growth.
Seattle has a rich history of creatives practicing across all mediums including music, painting, sculpture, architecture and design. We created a community to not only house these creatives, but to give them a home to showcase their work as we partnered with the city and other artist housing groups to throw monthly community wide art walks.
Scope: Member recruitment (grew membership from 5 to 10), investor management, contract management, construction project management, financial management.
Roles: LLC Manager, Head of Finance, Head of Records, Head of Art Walk Committee
2016 — 2017
2016 — 2017
San Francisco Bay Area
Focused on new lines of business and research to address service expectations for the next generation of client-first banking and lending. Liaised across product, engineering, marketing, and legal to ensure market fit and high accessibility standards.
Influenced org to embrace modern design tools, user testing capability and product development processes that rapidly reduced time to ship time from months to weeks. Mentored designers and led the team to build next-generation digital tools and products across mobile and web.
Focus: Product development, accessibility in design, modernizing digital design systems and processes, improving usability to align with company mission, design leadership and mentorship
2015 — 2016
2015 — 2016
San Francisco Bay Area
Launched Creative Services Department.
Partnered with directors and cross-functional teams to define design requirements and develop creative briefs. Established and drove design process from ideation through development. Managed projects with designers and engineers.
Led re-design of the website.
Established design for responsive website, templates and brand assets. Presented high and low-fidelity mockups to key stakeholders to inform final design direction. Partnered across engineering, product, marketing and legal for implementation.
Led company re-brand.
Shifted brand focus from business software to emphasizing people that benefit from the software, humanizing the experience. Guided design of the brand evolution while collaborating with cross-functional teams and agency partners. Developed and integrated design standards across media, departments and vendors. Developed brand guidelines, global brand book and localized style guides. Re-designed and created engaging and effective campaign assets including dynamic tools, landing pages, and emails.
Led re-brand of company values.
Collaborated with HR and culture teams for an internal rebrand of the company values based on research and evolution of the company culture.
Education
California State University, Fullerton
BFA
Deque University
Accessibility
Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze