Director of Product Design & Research with over a decade of experience building and scaling high-performing design teams for SaaS and platform products. Accomplished player-coach who sets a compelling design vision, delivers business results, and nurtures talent from early career to leadership roles. Adept at cross-functional collaboration, process optimization, and rolling out design systems to support rapid growth and high product quality. Known for a research-driven, inclusive approach that empowers teams and elevates user experience across multiple product lines.
Experience
2021 - Present
Built and led a growing design and research organization for a multi-product SaaS platform, recruiting, mentoring, and developing designers from junior to senior and lead roles.
Set and executed the design vision across several interoperable product lines, collaborating with Product, Engineering, and Go-to-Market teams to deliver cohesive user experiences.
Drove strategy and product direction through close partnership with executive leadership, leveraging user research, adoption data, and analytics to inform roadmaps and decisions.
Established and optimized design processes and frameworks that improved efficiency, quality, and collaboration.
Served as a player-coach: guided the team’s design direction, while stepping in on critical projects to ensure deadlines and quality standards were met.
Led full-cycle recruiting, onboarding, and talent development, focusing on nurturing high-potential juniors into senior roles.
Fostered a culture of research validation, iteration, and collaboration. Example: Call Explorer, one of the platform’s most research-validated areas, achieved a 4.2 UX Lite score, with 60% active user engagement and the highest retention rates on the platform.
2018 - 2021
Served as Design Lead for the Content Activation product line, driving data-informed research, interaction design, and establishing key product experience metrics.
Championed and secured resources to launch the Habanero Design System, achieving adoption by 7 of 8 design and front-end teams, and empowering decentralized development of components.
Developed UX strategy for Content Activation, working cross-functionally to define customer journeys and user success metrics that aligned teams toward shared goals.
Senior designer for Insights, Workflow, and Data Engineering projects, delivering enterprise-level features that improved onboarding, adoption, retention, and information architecture.
Advocated for user-centered design, data-driven process improvement, and alignment in cross-functional environments.
2013 - 2018
First designer and lead for Chatbar, guiding the product from initial validation to accessible, scalable solutions for major US retailers.
Led design and iterative enhancements for Chatbar, enabling launches with top online retailers and creating ahead-of-its-time chat experiences for web and mobile.
Supervised research initiatives and piloted in-store experimental products with partners like Newegg and Office Depot.
Established and evolved design systems that unified Product, Engineering, and Marketing teams, driving consistency and streamlining delivery.
Led accessibility initiatives and delivered user-centric experiences that shaped the company’s go-to-market approach.
Projects
2024-Present
I started Practice Round to help designers get real interview practice and feedback from people working in the field. The idea is simple: match job seekers with volunteer panelists for mock interviews, then share helpful, honest feedback so everyone grows. I currently handle most things from building the platform and designing the experience to organizing sessions and keeping the community running smoothly.
2018-2021
A friend and I built Sensive, a little side project that connected Figma to the rest of your workflow. Our plugin let you upload designs as you worked, so teams could share updates in real time and build better processes together. We launched it on Product Hunt, got a warm welcome from the community, and even picked up a few paying customers along the way.
Skills
Design Leadership
Career development, team mentorship, feedback culture, hiring & onboarding, growth path planning, cross-functional communication, research and discovery best practices, actionable quarterly reviews, iterative product-design-engineering collaboration
UX Design
User research, usability testing, journey mapping, design systems, workshopping, information architecture, wireframing, rapid prototyping, first-time user experience, content design & copywriting, accessibility, UX metrics, agile methodologies, iterative validation
Product Strategy & Operations
Vision setting, stakeholder alignment, outcome-driven roadmapping, data-informed prioritization, design process optimization, scalable frameworks, go-to-market collaboration, inclusive and equitable practices
Tools
Figma, FigJam, Miro, Framer, Webflow, Mixpanel, Hotjar, Dovetail, SQL, Adobe Creative Suite, HTML/CSS, Tailwind UI, Storybook, Jira, Confluence, Google Analytics, FullStory, ChatGPT, Cursor, Lovable, V0
Volunteering
Design Mentor
I draw from my experience as an individual contributor and leader to promote a design philosophy centered on research and ethical product decisions that positively impact the lives of the people we design for.
Education
Universidad Mayor Real y Pontificia San Francisco Xavier de Chuquisaca
Medicine and Human Health, 2009