# Tiffany C. > Director, Product Design Location: Oakland, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/tiffanyc I have led organizations through major business transformations, delivering measurable impact such as increased product and sales revenue, increased user activation, and reduced operational costs by launching innovative products, optimizing processes, and championing user-centered design. My approach combines a passion for developing future leaders with hands-on design expertise. I have established scalable hiring and talent development processes, championed inclusive research practices, and driven the adoption of agile methodologies across organizations. ## Work Experience ### Head of Design / Director of Product Design @ Yendo Jan 2025 – Present ### Sr. Manager, Product Design (Assessments, Districts/Enterprise, Content Platform, Visual Design) @ Khan Academy Jan 2024 – Jan 2025 | Oakland, California, United States • Spearheaded the launch of a 0-1 GenAI-powered product, overseeing cross-functional teams and empowering the squad to drive experimentation and innovation, resulting in engagement from over 12,000 students. • Created executive buy-in for a new visual language and branding initiative, leading a multi-disciplinary team to support a strategic goal of increasing licenses sold by 32%. • Established and evolved hiring and talent development processes, mentoring managers to elevate team craft, improve design critiques, and build a robust pipeline of design and research leaders. • Orchestrated the development and implementation of multi-team roadmaps, collaborating with senior leadership to ensure strategic alignment and successful pilot launches. • Led the transformation of design and research practices, guiding designers to deliver actionable insights and measurable business impact through targeted, implementable recommendations. ### Head of Design / Design Director (Design-led innovation lab) @ CSL Behring Jan 2021 – Jan 2024 | Austin, TX • Built and scaled an in-house design organization from the ground up, directly managing people managers and contingent workforce leads to ensure optimal team structure, resource allocation, and delivery against aggressive roadmaps. • Developed and implemented leadership frameworks for people managers, empowering them to drive hiring, performance management, and professional development within their teams. • Served as a strategic partner to executive leadership (CIO, CTO), advocating for design’s role in business transformation and ensuring that managers were equipped to represent design at the highest levels. • Oversaw the end-to-end user experience for a proprietary data marketplace, delegating ownership to managers and holding them accountable for delivery, quality, and stakeholder engagement. • Drove operational excellence by mentoring managers to optimize workflows, resulting in a 41% reduction in call center volume through improved product design and process innovation. ### Manager, Product Design (Cart/Checkout and Shopper Experience) @ H-E-B Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area • Led a matrixed design organization, managing a team of multidisciplinary product designers, content designers, and researchers across three feature squads, instilling a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement. • Empowered designers to deliver on key business goals, including the launch of high-impact features that drove customer engagement from 30% to 51% and generated $476K in new revenue within three months. • Instituted agile ceremonies and operational best practices across the design organization, coaching managers to scale these processes and foster cross-functional alignment. • Developed and implemented professional development programs for designers and researchers, ensuring the growth of future leaders and the adoption of agile methodologies. • Facilitated executive workshops and strategic planning sessions, enabling managers to translate business opportunities into actionable product visions and roadmaps. • Used a rapid research approach to improve new feature release to increase discoverability and usage (from 11 to 16%). ### UX Lead @ USAA Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | Austin, Texas, United States • Advocated and created new research protocols to ensure inclusive research approach (e.g. using participatory research, widening recruitment efforts to reflect appropriate demographics). • Designed a new digital experience for our mortgage application process; conducted evaluative interviews to assess task completion; ensured equity in application process for differing racial groups and advocating for their needs to stakeholders. • Conducted research on how consumers understood “money movement” and overdraft fees in order to improve customer’s mental model of understanding their checking account balances. • Established new relationships between cross-functional teams such as data science and marketing to build better customer profiles and anticipate customer needs. ### Lead Researcher/Designer @ argodesign Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Austin, Texas, United States • Responsible for concept work, detailed design, creating components, and developer handoff for UnitedRentals, McAfee LiveSafe software, and IBM Red Hat. • Introduced clients to various disciplines in design thinking exercises (e.g. storymapping, mental models, HMW) to ideate collaboratively, challenge previously held assumptions and shift from a solution-oriented approach to a problem-oriented approach. • Established research programs with several clients including UnitedRentals, IBM, and McAfee using open card sorts, interviews, contextual inquiry, and usability testing. ### Interaction Designer @ frog Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 ### Senior Interaction Designer @ Fjord, Part of Accenture Interactive Jan 2014 – Jan 2016 | Austin, Texas Area • Wrote and successfully sold SOW/LOE for clients, including a $1 million engagement with Frost Museum of Science. • Used Google Analytics to identify patterns and trends for user insights and to prioritize content hierarchy, ecommerce flow and site map • Conducted generative research plan to identify customer pain points, mental models and workflows around museum going behavior to prioritize feature work. • Developed personas, customer journey maps, and mental models. • Learned and socialized accessible design principles across our design team, writing ARIA tags, ensuring front-end engineers learned semantic markup, and annotated designs for accessibility. ### User Experience Strategist @ The Advisory Board Company Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | Austin, Texas Area • Created designs for flagship products as we moved from a fee-for-service to value-based healthcare approach by keeping up with new federal guidelines. • Advocated for and conducted a usability test for a new feature (single sign-on) and successfully recommended an alternative workflow with 100% task completion for users based on outcomes. • Ensured design helped meet business KPIs during a transitional time for providers, insurance, and patients by working with engineering to implement analytic hooks to track app usage. ### User Experience Architect @ Dell Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Round Rock, Texas • Led multi-variate and A/B testing for our global site in a fast-pace, bi-weekly test release environment. • Created a testing variant for account login that lifted authentication process by 43%, increased conversion to sales by 48% and 7% lift in AOV. Variants focused on content and interaction flow. • Increased Japan’s traffic to checkout pages by 3% via progress bar redesign. • Designed Dell’s first platform-agnostic ecommerce application, working closely with engineering and product management to ensure usability across mobile, tablets, and PCs. • Defined site hierarchy elements and interaction for navigation, filter, sort, product detail pages, cart and checkout. • Streamlined cart and checkout process from multiple inconsistent paths to a scalable item to cart pattern. ### User Experience Intern @ JSTOR Jan 2012 – Jan 2012 | Ann Arbor, MI ### Social Media Assistant @ CHI 2012 Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | Ann Arbor, MI + Communications and social media for CHI 2012, WikiSym 2012, and CSCW 2012-2013 conference. ### UX intern @ Information Technology Services, University of Michigan Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 | Ann Arbor, MI + Integrate Google Apps into University of Michigan's educational portal, CTools. + Develop personas, scenarios, use cases + Survey creation and results analysis ### User Experience Intern @ athenahealth Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 | Boston, MA + Collaborated with developers and project managers to develop the first iteration of a reporting tool to maximize automated metrics. + Gathered business requirements, conducted interviews, and built wireframes for internal documentation system. ### Consultant @ Pancreapedia Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 | Ann Arbor, MI + Holistic usability evaluation for innovative biomedical research/social network site + Resulted in organization implementing major recommendations into current system. ### Research Assistant (University of Michigan) @ University of Michigan Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 + Cull quantitative data to create new datasets to supplement grant proposals. + Provide competitive analysis research regarding current National Science Foundation funding opportunities on health literacy. ### Communications intern @ Applied Research Center Jan 2009 – Jan 2009 | New York, NY + Conducted in-depth research on specific topics for ARC’s expert panel at House and Senate briefings. + Connected blog readers with interested topics by providing information resources, conducting interviews, and writing stories on current events. ### Marketing & Communications intern @ Common Cents Jan 2009 – Jan 2009 | New York, NY + Edited and set stylistic tones for corporate sponsorship letters of inquiry and other promotional texts. + Organized and maintained database for clarity and usability. ### Youth Development Worker @ Harlem Day Charter School Jan 2009 – Jan 2009 | New York, NY + Created and executed learning modules for after-school program. + Modified classroom lessons to reflect student both academic needs and social interests. + Implemented task flow between various subject curricula and externally arranged activities. ### Editorial Intern @ The Commonwealth Club of California Jan 2008 – Jan 2008 | San Francisco, CA + Curated club exhibition to celebrate anniversary by juxtaposing timeline of world and club milestones. + Edited mock-ups of layout for visual consistency and provided recommendations for design clarity. + Constructed cohesive storylines from speeches by combining transcribed speeches with supplemented research. ### Marketing Services Intern @ Perseus Books Group Jan 2008 – Jan 2008 | Berkeley, CA + Targeted consumer demographic with product summaries on high-traffic websites such as Amazon.com. + Updated company web content and content management system for release of new website. + Create promotional materials with Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and hand-drawn artwork. ## Education ### Postdoctoral Scholar Stanford University ### Doctor of Philosophy - PhD in Sociology UC Santa Barbara ### MSI in Human Computer Interaction, Community Informatics University of Michigan - School of Information ### B.A. in English, Ethnic Studies University of California, Berkeley ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ciaotiffany - Portfolio: https://www.tiffanychowdesigns.com/ --- Source: https://flows.cv/tiffanyc JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/tiffanyc/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13