# Katherine Root > Design @ Manta Cares Location: Mountain View, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/katherineroot Hi there! 👋 I’m an innovative and strategic design leader, with a love for UX, IxD, HCI, and designing how people engage with technology. For over a decade, I’ve been championing product and UX design at Bay Area startups. I entered the world of product design early, receiving my bachelor’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction, and have devoted my entire career to shaping how people engage with technology 🤖 I’m the type of design leader who always stays connected to the work, and regardless of what my title is these days, I like to call myself an experience designer ✨ My role goes far beyond crafting screens or managing people—it’s about orchestrating the journey a person takes when they interact with my products. It’s about creating cohesion, meaning, and delight across the whole experience, and while I enjoy the creativity of designing beautiful, functional interfaces in Figma (cue the “oohs” and “ahhs”), my favorite part of what I do is often behind the scenes 🫣 It’s in designing seamless workflows that often go unnoticed, building systems that empower product teams to communicate, fostering cultures where people thrive, and making products people want to use. It’s about bringing order to chaos, elegance to the everyday, and expression to what often goes unsaid. And in the messy, complex, and intangible challenges of this field, I believe experience design has the power to make a true impact on the world 🌸 My Wheelhouse: 0-to-1 Design, User Experience Design (UX), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Interaction Design (IxD), Product Design, Flow Design, Rapid Prototyping, Whiteboarding, User Research, Usability Testing, Solving Ambiguous Problems, Influencing Stakeholders, Deep Domain Knowledge, Clear Communication. ## Work Experience ### Head of Design @ Manta Cares Jan 2025 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States ### Director of Design @ Mighty Networks Jan 2020 – Jan 2025 | Remote Defining and implementing an innovative product vision during a critical period of growth following our Series B. Continuously pushing our product's user experience to be more focused, more delightful, and more meaningful as we aim to bring People Magic to online communities. Contributing individual design work on critical projects, while supporting a healthy team environment. Spearheading the creation of a cohesive cross-platform design system for mobile and web applications, evangelizing the strategic role of product design across the company, implementing human-centered design methodologies across all projects, and collaborating with C-Suite to define product strategy and development cycles. Hiring, scaling, and maintaining a design team as large as 8, establishing remote-based design workflows, reviewing and critiquing design deliverables, mentoring team members, and fostering a culture of innovation and continuous learning. ### Senior Product Designer @ Mighty Networks Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | Palo Alto, CA Played a key role in company-wide strategy and planning conversations, mentored and interviewed new employees, established and iterated on a scalable design system, and ensured a high quality user experience bar was being met across all teams. This is in addition to continuing responsibilities from my role as a Product Designer, detailed below. ### Product Designer @ Mighty Networks Jan 2015 – Jan 2018 | Palo Alto, CA Led projects spanning all disciplines of design on Desktop, Responsive Web, iOS, and Android. Regularly created and presented design specifications, user flows, mockups, and other deliverables to leadership, including the CEO. Enumerated key use cases to drive usage of our app by both Hosts and members. Worked closely with engineering to create achievable scope, and ensure all projects were delivered to a high quality standard. ### Vote Center Lead @ County of Santa Clara Registrar of Voters Jan 2024 – Jan 2024 ### Product & Interaction Designer @ Simply Hired Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | Sunnyvale, CA Enhancing the user experience of searching for a job by updating existing designs and creating new ones for both internal and external use. Seeing designs through all phases of the product process, including initial brainstorming, creating wireframes and mockups, fine tuning HTML and CSS, and QA testing. All designs include a responsive version for mobile and tablet. ### Design Consultant @ CircleBlack, Inc. Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | Remote Working with a small remote team of engineers and managers to create wealth management software. Responsibilities include meeting with potential clients, creating wireframes and visual designs, and any other tasks across the team that need to be completed. ### Lead Interaction Designer @ Copper Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 | San Mateo, CA (Formerly Prosperworks) Working with a small team of engineers and designers to create CRM Software for small businesses. Responsibilities included conducting user research, defining product features, creating wireframes, and working with engineers to ensure the product matches specifications. ### Interaction Designer @ Launch Design, LLC Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Los Gatos, CA (Merged with Prosperworks in 2013) Consulting design firm working with companies of all sizes to create an easy and beautiful user experience for their products. Focus on creating intuitive information architecture, creating detailed and annotated wireframes, communicating with clients, and occasionally adding visual UI design. Clients include Serials Solutions, LinkedIn, eBay, and Yahoo. ### Interaction Designer @ SRI International - AIC Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 | Menlo Park, CA Working with a team to redesign the interaction of military procedural software for use as an Android application. Also creating and managing a standard icon repository for use in present and future projects. ### Web Developer & Designer @ Get In Sell Out Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 | Bellevue, WA Converting mock up images of main consumer and business facing web pages into HTML and CSS, critiquing designs, creating business cards, compiling a style guide, and completing various other design tasks. ## Education ### BS Informatics (Human-Computer Interaction) in Interaction Design Minor University of Washington ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/katherineroot - Portfolio: http://www.katherineroot.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/katherineroot JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/katherineroot/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13