# Benji Michalek > VP of Design at Signos Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/benjimichalek Passionate about innovation as a discipline and its role in progressive change. Also, a fan of fine bourbons and orange cats. ## Work Experience ### VP of Design @ Signos Jan 2023 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States ### Head of Design @ Signos Jan 2021 – Jan 2023 | San Francisco Bay Area ### Head of Design @ Embark Veterinary Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | Boston, Massachusetts, United States ### Sr. Experience Design Manager (UX) – Best in Class @ Wayfair Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Greater Boston Area Ensure a best-in-class shopping experience for millions of products across hundreds of product categories, for all of our brands and geographies. ### VP of Design & Innovation @ Fifth Third Bank Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | Cincinnati, OH ### Product Design & Innovation, Lead @ Cardinal Health Jan 2015 – Jan 2018 | 4305 W Dublin Granville Rd, Dublin, OH 43017 Champion human-centric design through exploration, testing, prototyping, and business strategy for projects in the innovation pipeline. Conduct research through ethnographic observation and interviews. Facilitate user interviews, ideation sessions, and innovation prospecting activities. Design concepts and rapidly iterate inside of our clients’ spaces in sprint activities. Write and design interview scripts and user activities/tests. Identify marketing and technology trends that will holistically affect users. Work with product teams to monitor users’ behavior, pain points, and desires as they navigate a concept experience. Articulate UX opportunities through written and graphical documentation. Create low and high fidelity concepts. Relentlessly consider the whole system and each detail from the user’s perspective. Clearly communicate design rationale and run team critique sessions. Prioritize and communicate the most important battles to add value for users. Clearly identify assumptions and requirements and work to test them. Elaborate on a robust set of research tools to tackle extremely challenging user research (ie cancer patients, drug addicts, etc). Mentor a new innovation team in Lean, Agile, and other innovation practices. ### Innovation Strategist - UX/UI Lead @ Alliance Data Retail Services Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | Easton Town Center Management of the story behind a high-profile innovation lab space, support development and implementation of innovation initiatives and prototypes, demonstrate new technologies within the innovation space to C-class executives through story telling. Design of mocks, storyboards, wireframes, 3D renderings, and motion graphics for web and mobile using the Adobe Suite and Blender. Front-end development, design, and support of new prototypes, apps, and varying technologies using Cordova and NodeJS. Team lead UX/UI designer, story teller, capabilities management, communications expert, and gamification guru. Led cross-functional conversations with legal/compliance, industrial designers, hardware/software developers to create fully realized solutions. Successfully owned 5 products, and executed sales, work streams, and tech strategies behind them. Created 1 new patent for Alliance Data around marketing through UX. Collaborated with close to 200 associates across the company for support on varying innovation initiatives. Developed and presented bi-weekly innovation classes for a Fortune 500 company. ## Education ### B.A. in Strategic Communications The Ohio State University Jan 2007 – Jan 2008 ### B.A. in Japanese The Ohio State University Jan 2004 – Jan 2007 ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/bmichalek - Portfolio: http://www.augustmane.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/benjimichalek JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/benjimichalek/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-25