Building and scaling a design function
Joined as the first designer and built the design function — people, practice, and the system that outlived any one project.
- Senior Director of Product Design
- 2021
- 2016 – 2024
Overview
I joined as employee-designer number one. There was no design practice, no system, and no shared language for quality. Over several years I built the function from the ground up — and made sure it could run without me in the room.
Role & contribution
I hired and developed the team, set the operating model, and established the rituals — critique, research cadence, and a shared definition of done — that made quality repeatable.
“The job stops being about your own pixels and starts being about the conditions other people do great work in.
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Outcome / impact
The team grew from one to eleven, with a people-first operating model and a design practice that became a durable part of how the company built products.
Reflection
A people-first culture isn’t soft — it’s the most reliable way I know to get hard, consistent quality out of a team over years rather than weeks.