# Melanie Cernak > Staff Product Designer at Checkr, Inc. Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/melaniecernak Hi, I’m Melanie. I’m a Product Designer in San Francisco focused on criminal justice reform. Here’s what I care about: • Designing with empathy: Developing emotional connections with users with an underlying drive to make things better. • Being mission driven: Feeling accountable towards how I’m impacting both direct customers and the greater world. • Solving the problems that are most impactful: Thinking beyond problems that are just the most quantifiable to solve those that will have the most lasting impact. ## Work Experience ### Staff Product Designer @ Checkr, Inc. Jan 2022 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States ### Senior Product Designer @ Checkr, Inc. Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 | San Francisco, California, United States https://www.design.checkr.com/ ### Product Designer @ Checkr, Inc. Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | San Francisco Bay Area ### Product Designer @ Tophatter Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco Bay Area • Founded Tophatter’s design team of four and currently lead the human-centered design process to promote ease of use and optimize how users interact with the mobile app and desktop. • Launched 20+ new product features and six redesigns that improved the customer experience and grew the business. One new feature, Challenge of the Week, increased return payer attendance by 11% and payer conversion by 10%. One redesign, Checkout Experience Redesign, increased new user payer conversion by 9%. • Synthesize concepts into wireframes and articulate ideations to product managers, business leads, and engineers, to deliver a thoughtful user experience. • Define quarterly design strategy by identifying and filling product gaps. • Own user research strategy; conduct weekly usability tests to validate assumptions and inform design iterations. • Introduced Google Ventures’ Design Sprint methodology. Lead Design Sprints to tackle critical business challenges, compressing time for a signal from three weeks to four days. ### Product Manager @ Tophatter Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area • Led a team of four senior full-stack engineers and one data scientist in building machine-learning models to predict inventory performance, inventory de-duplication, and taxonomical classification, in order to improve the customer shopping experience. • Developed and implemented inventory quality standards, which increased new, high-quality inventory sold by 22%. ### Partner Account Manager @ Tophatter Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area • Determined long term growth strategies and developed strong interpersonal relationships with 20 high-value accounts, generating $9 million in annual net revenue. • Sized opportunities, determined selling fees, and monitored qualitative service metrics for 80+ mid-sized accounts, accounting for $6 million in annual net revenue. • Served as the liaison between sellers and internal product teams to improve tools for inventory management, order fulfillment, and sales analytics
. • Exceeded Q4 2017 advertising revenue goal by 112%. ### Partner Manager//Business Development Associate @ GoodHire Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | Redwood City, CA • Designed API integrations with 15 applicant tracking systems to optimize adoption, user experience, and retention, achieving 46% Net Sales Revenue growth Q/Q. • Spearheaded first company co-branded webinar to deliver over 230 marketing qualified leads. • Served as acting Scrum Master, leading KPI tracking and dashboard reporting for team of nine. ### Project Manager @ Center for Effective Global Action Jan 2012 – Jan 2015 | University of California, Berkeley • Led the human-centered design process to build an interactive health curriculum to address communicable diseases from a demand-side. Lived in Chennai to develop empathy for end users, generated ideas that turned into prototypes, tested these prototypes with primary school students, and made improvements based on feedback. • Directed a global team of 15 student researchers from UC Berkeley and IIT Madras to develop standards for teaching new health curriculum. • Fostered partnerships with Teach for India, Rotary Club, UNICEF, and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan to sustain curriculum. ### Acquisition Marketing Intern @ Hightail (formerly YouSendIt) Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 | Campbell, California • Produced incremental increase of 200K impressions and 2% engagement from a $15K Twitter direct response campaign. • Strategically implemented 5 multi-channel ads to expand beyond Hightail's freemium model and monetize user channels. • Analyzed over 500 affiliates' performance on a CPGA basis and created cohorts to increase customer lifetime value for high-value accounts. ### Financial Analyst Intern @ Interfunds Inc. Jan 2012 – Jan 2012 | Emeryville, CA • Delivered a comprehensive meta-analysis of the housing industry’s financial balance sheets. • Championed final results and incorporated them into future executive investment planning. ## Education ### Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Business Administration University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business Jan 2011 – Jan 2015 ### International Business and Journalism The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 ### User Experience Design General Assembly Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/melaniecernak - Portfolio: https://www.melaniecernak.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/melaniecernak JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/melaniecernak/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-30