When I’m working

20+ years of design experience has made me fanatically committed to customers, users, and the teams I manage. Getting an MBA in 2023 has enriched my ability to relate the business’ strategic goals to the needs of our customers. I try to act as a translator between these two worlds.

Now, in the face of emergent AI disruption, design and business hard skills are being impacted, while collaboration, communication, empathy, and judgement are in increasingly high demand.

How I lead

Craft: Align on customer problems and execute a research-based design process that moves the business forward.

Infrastructure: A supportive working environment that removes barriers to success.

Personal development: A commitment to helping my team use our time together for growth and taking on new challenges.

When I’m not working

I live in San Diego, CA with my family.

We have two teenagers who keep us busy, especially going to see live music. Ask me about last summer when I saw three concerts in ten days.

I make gnocchi from scratch every Christmas Eve. I listen to a wide range of podcasts. I am a fan of the Washington Commanders and Liverpool FC.

When I can, I try to get in some yoga and beach time.

Principles (make the work good)

  • For Product teams, making good decisions is only possible with good information. Our understanding of users, technology, and the broader business context must be rooted in provable facts.

  • Everyone on the team should be able to understand and communicate the context, constraints, and strategy of a given design. We hold each other accountable for weak decisions and push each other to strengthen the work.

  • We are in a time of immense technological disruption. It is far to easy to let the power of technology overshadow the needs of the people who use our products, including our own needs in the design process. We have to shape our Products and Practice to make the most of AI, without losing the strengths we bring to the table.

  • Effective design turns our understanding of users into a product experience that resonates accordingly.

  • Product Design is executed in the broader context of a user, customer, company, and industry. Effective design will require balance to find the best solution given that context. If tradeoffs must be made, then those design decisions must be as explainable as any other.

  • Design has tremendous power to make things easy, but this can come at a price. And that price may not be realized right away, only downstream. It is the Product team’s responsibility use the tools of Design Thinking, Lean UX, User Research and so on to identify, assess, and manage those risks.

Values (make the team good)

  • It is best, in all professional cases, to work with facts. It is tempting, in many cases, to entertain possibilities. In the case of Design Research,

  • Whether remote or in-office, immediate team or broader stakeholders, outside users or inside partners, being present for each other is paramount.

  • Effective design turns our understanding of users into a product experience that resonates accordingly.

  • It’s worth it to say the thing that might otherwise go unsaid, whether it’s a professional concern or personal feedback Our commitment to candor, delivered with empathy, is necessary for our performance in the moment and growth in the future.