# Lauren Manuel > Product Design Lead @Carta Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/laurenmanuel My path has taken me through agencies, a studio of my own, and deeply technical product teams, but the core of my work stays the same: bring clarity to complexity. I care about craft, about the small choices that make a system feel coherent, and about connecting ideas that don’t yet know they belong together. I’m motivated by clear thinking, good collaboration, and the satisfaction of seeing hard problems start to soften. ## Work Experience ### Product Design Lead @ Carta Jan 2024 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States I design for core fund operations at Carta, making complex private-market workflows easier to understand and use. I work across product and engineering to bring clarity to high-stakes processes and help shape the systems behind Carta’s emerging ERP for private capital. ### Staff Product Designer, Tanzu Learning (Spring Academy) @ VMware Jan 2022 – Jan 2023 Part of a small founding design team that built Spring Academy from zero to one inside a large enterprise environment. Drove product definition, experience strategy, and day-to-day execution in a highly technical domain—establishing how work moved from discovery to delivery, aligning senior stakeholders, and creating the systems the team relied on to plan, build, and iterate. ### Senior Product Designer, Product & Leadership Advisory @ VMware Tanzu Labs Jan 2018 – Jan 2022 | Denver, Colorado, United States Came into Tanzu Labs through VMware’s acquisition of Pivotal Labs. I worked side-by-side with client teams to build and ship real software, relying on strong product principles and rapid iteration to make decisions in real time. Most of my work lived in less-defined problem spaces, where designing, shipping, and learning happened together. Along the way, I helped teams sharpen how they worked, tightening iteration, collaboration, and focus without adding ceremony. Projects spanned healthcare, logistics, government, and cloud infrastructure, including work with FedEx, CVS Health, Vizient, and VMware R&D. ### Co-founder / Designer @ Boss Sauce Creative Jan 2014 – Jan 2018 | Santa Monica, California, United States Co-founded a boutique studio doing highly bespoke digital and brand work for both emerging creators and large companies. The work spanned rebrands and brand systems, custom websites and e-commerce revamps, campaign-driven digital experiences, and select product and app builds for clients like Sephora and internationally recognized musicians. I led end-to-end design across brand identity, UX and UI, and custom builds, including CMS-driven sites, one-off interactive experiences, and occasional product and app work. Most projects started from a blank slate, with the goal of shaping cohesive digital systems that matched each client’s goals, voice, and audience. ### Lead UI/UX Designer @ Five by Five Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | Los Angeles, CA Led design for the LA office, creating digital campaigns and interactive experiences for major entertainment and consumer brands. Worked directly with clients like Activision, Red Bull, and Ubisoft to pitch concepts, refine ideas, and deliver polished digital work in fast-moving environments. ### Digital Designer @ Lunchbox (J. Walter Thompson) Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Culver City, CA Worked as part of a fast-paced agency team creating digital activations and campaign experiences for Walmart and its major retail partners, including Mattel, Hasbro, Mars, Kimberly-Clark, Unilever, Philips, and Sanrio. Took projects from early concept through launch, shaping ideas with copywriters, art directors, and developers and translating them into interactive online and in-store experiences. This role sharpened my ability to generate and pitch concepts quickly, collaborate across disciplines, and deliver digital work that performed at scale. ### Junior Designer @ Lunchbox (J. Walter Thompson) Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 ### Design Intern @ Lunchbox (J. Walter Thompson) Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 ## Education ### Bachelor of Arts in Design | Media Arts; Minor: Human Complex Systems UCLA ### French in Arts and Architecture of Paris ICP ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/laurenmanuel - Portfolio: http://www.laurenmanuel.co - Portfolio: http://www.bosssauce.it --- Source: https://flows.cv/laurenmanuel JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/laurenmanuel/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13