I specialize in creating exceptional products and experiences across software, hardware, and environments.
I am driven by a love of learning, a curiosity for human behavior, and a passion for building impactful teams.
I’m an enthusiast who loves a challenge and takes a human- centered and inclusive design approach to making great products.
I bring world-changing ideas to life through design
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I lead teams, build teams, and bring people together to deepen foundational understanding, create brilliant new ideas, prototype game-changing products, and build start-ups that meet real customer needs in delightful ways.
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From brand identities to wayfinding systems, I craft visuals that communicate ideas clearly and create meaningful experiences. I merge graphic design, typography, and storytelling across physical and digital media—whether it’s a hand-painted sign or a complex design framework.
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I help individuals and teams unlock their full potential at every stage of their design careers. Through coaching, facilitation, and hands-on guidance, I develop creative confidence, decision-making skills, and collaborative excellence in human-centered design and leadership.
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I design and build physical environments and experiences that foster connection, belonging, and presence. Rooted in local vernacular and materiality, my work spans intimate gathering spaces to immersive installations, always prioritizing the human experience.
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I lead transformative outdoor experiences that cultivate resilience, collaboration, and a deep connection to nature. With decades of expertise in wilderness expeditions—backpacking, whitewater canoeing, and birding—I create environments where teams thrive through preparation, risk mitigation, and shared adventure.
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I synthesize complexity into actionable strategy. Whether shaping the future of products, organizations, or creative processes, I map ecosystems, uncover patterns, and align teams toward clear, compelling visions that drive impact.
Build a shared understanding
Every great product starts with clear goals and success metrics. I push for cross-disciplinary and stakeholder alignment on the mission and vision of the work at every key juncture of a project, because this alignment is crucial to create the trust and freedom needed for great design and strategy work to happen. In design, things are constantly changing, so I love to ask, “what’s changed?” to get us talking about what we’re learning, sensing, and building.
My mission is to cultivate healthy and high performing teams that build world-class products. My approach at a glance:
Slow down to speed up
Taking the time to get to know each other as individuals with distinct needs, skills, and goals builds a solid foundation for mutual respect, collaboration, and improves outcomes when challenges arise. I facilitate an activity called a Team Leap to build rapport with new and existing teams. I prioritize regular check-ins with my team and stakeholders to keep communication open, provide support, collaborate, coach, and share feedback both ways.
Communicate human needs
Solving problems and building great design starts with deeply knowing the needs, motivations and behaviors of the people we design for. I bring business, engineering, and design teams into foundational research to develop empathy for the people we design for. This practice improves collaboration, prioritization, and decision-making throughout a project. It also upskills folks that are new to design thinking and makes everyone an advocate for customer needs.
Tell awesome stories
Great strategy can be felt and data has stories to tell. My teams address business goals through design recommendations that are rooted in human needs, data, and shared through compelling narratives that illustrate the business value of design. By structuring strategy and design into themes and priorities that compound innovation over time, we shift the bottom line and make substantive impact on the business through a scalable approach.
Product follows strong processes
How we work is as important as what we make. Inclusivity in research and design make for better products by including divergent points of view and uncovering gaps in understanding. A human-centered design process and design thinking methods keep design focused on what’s most important. Collaborating across disciplines and testing ideas throughout a project builds understanding, consensus, more ideas, and ultimately better products.
Background
Prior to Sonos, for 11 years I worked at frog design, leading design and research strategy for Fortune 100 companies and NGOs, helping envision groundbreaking futures rooted in research and innovation. My career began in UX and visual design at Comcast and smaller consultancies in Philadelphia and Savannah after earning a BFA in Interaction and Industrial Design from SCAD.
For the past three years, I’ve been the Lead Creative Director and Director of UX Strategy at Sonos, where I focused on new product innovation, building amazing teams, and shaping the future of sound through human-centered design.
Design Résumé
My mission is to lead and empower dynamic teams to create visionary products and experiences that build community and address real human needs.
I thrive at the intersection of innovation, strategy, and collaboration. I’m enthusiastic about driving business impact while fostering inclusion and realizing surprising opportunities. My leadership nurtures creativity, delivers meaningful change.
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Albertsons • Alto • Amazon • AT&T • Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation • Bridgewater Associates • Disney • Eli Lilly • HP • H&R Block • GE • GM • GSMA • Intuit • Merck • Microsoft • Samsung • Schlumberger • University of Pennsylvania Hospital • US Department of Veterans Affairs • Vixxo • Xfinity • and more...
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Visionary creative leadership
UX, ID, & design strategy
0-1/MVP/new products & experiences
Human-centered design
Team leadership & management
Inclusive hiring & team building
Coaching, development & performance
Collaboration & workshop facilitation
Stakeholder alignment & engagement
Communicating the value of design
Opportunity evaluation & roadmapping
Scoping & pace-setting
Design, UX & research program planning
Design concept & vision development
E2E customer experience strategy
Top-quality pixel-detail implementation
Budgeting, contracts & staffing
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Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop • Confluence • Dovetail • dScout • Figma • G-Suite • Jira • Keynote • Miro • Microsoft Office • Notion • Procreate • Slack • Zoom
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• Board Member, City of Marfa Parks & Recreation Biz Dev Corp – 2023 - 2025
• Volunteer, Judd Foundation – 2024-2025
• Steering Committee Member, Women@Sonos ERG – 2022 - 2025
• Peer Mentor - 2020 - 2025
• Kealing Park Cleanup Crew – 2017 - 2025
• Volunteer, Marfa 100 – 2024
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Savannah College of Art & Design, Savannah, GA • 2004 - 2008
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Industrial Design & Interaction Design, Magna cum Laude
Colorado Mesa University, Grand Junction, CO • 2003 - 2004
Coursework in History & Philosophy of Science & Technology, Astronomy, GPA 4.0
EXPERIENCESonos
Director of UX Strategy • November 2023 – February 2025
Led cross-functional teams and strategic initiatives to define new strategies and differentiation opportunities that addressed unmet needs and expanded Sonos’ audience while aligning with the brand’s core values of emotional connection, joy, and delight.
Navigated ambiguity and rapid change to develop ground-up products, forge new partnerships, and drive roadmap strategies focused on inclusive, delightful customer experiences. Defined the next-generation software product vision and mission to guide future innovation.
Lead Creative Director • January 2021 – February 2025
Founded the Creative Direction team at Sonos, responsible for UX vision, strategy, and global design system. Led a multidisciplinary team to produce new visual and brand identity for the next App. Pioneered a scalable design system that enabled seamless multi-platform user experiences and fostered brand consistency across digital and physical products.
Built a leadership contingent of Creative Directors across UX, Hardware, and Brand, that established a new inclusive approach to product development, fostered healthy team dynamics, and elevated quality across research and design initiatives, resulting in greater reach and impact of strategies across product and engineering groups.
Led the Exploration Design Team of eight senior design and engineering practitioners spanning four business units to research and design visionary new products and experiences on a 5-10 year horizon. Led opportunity evaluation, product market fit, and technology feasibility to prioritize new opportunities on the product roadmap. Partnered with the CEO and Board of Directors to influence the roadmap strategy with new category experiences and secured a dozen patents for the team.
Managed 5 individual contributors with no attrition; promoted two individuals in two years, identified individual and team development opportunities, created job descriptions, defined new roles, and built healthy team dynamics from the ground up.
frog
Director of Design • July 2019 – January 2021
Responsible for building new business and growing existing relationships through strategy consulting and partnership; 2020 sales totaled over $15M, ranked top three in sales internationally.
Responsible for hiring and career management of five ICs and two managers in addition to client projects with budgets of $200k - $2M+.
Led a 41-person multidisciplinary and embedded team to deliver a world-class, white-labeled SaaS platform that that enabled 2x faster credit union applications and 17% less abandonment. Responsible for vision and product strategy, design implementation and alignment across product, design and technology; led client’s experience roadmap, scaled the design systems.
Associate Creative Director • January 2018 – July 2019
Scoped, planned and managed project teams. Focused on 0-1 startups: launched three products in-market and deliver visionary concept work to clients; led a 20-person multidisciplinary team to envision, create and launch a hospitality-transportation company from scratch in under 32 weeks – that company now has delivered 65K+ rides, has a 75 NPS, and raised over $15M to expand to its sixth city.
Responsible for resourcing, career management and development of designers, contributed to mentorship, internship, and hiring programs, and led projects with budgets of $150k - $1M+
Principal Designer & Design Research Lead • April 2015 – January 2018
Scoped, planned and led design research and research projects across the product lifecycle for social impact, consumer electronics, entertainment, healthcare, and transportation projects across the US, Europe, Asia and Africa. Embedded with clients in multinational projects that resulted in workshops, co-creation, and facilitation of international teams that uncovered and owned insights, opportunities, MVP feature sets, and updated strategies for new products and services.
Responsible for design research thought leadership at frog; created, taught and published frog’s interactive design research toolkit, a public self-service tool for creating quality research practices.
Senior Interaction Designer • April 2012 – April 2015
Responsible for designing systems and interfaces across mobile, tablet, web, and large-format, focused on the transformation of user data into usable, useful systems and delightful experiences. Lead designer for Disney’s first interactive maps launched on iPhone and iPad.
Transformed customer data into design concepts, interaction design, and detailed visual design. Specialized in conceptual models, storyboards, and archetypes, detailed documentation and technical writing that brought both insights and technical requirements to life.
Interaction Designer • August 2010 - April 2012
Transformed customer data into design concepts, interaction design, and detailed visual design. Specialized in conceptual models, storyboards, and archetypes, detailed documentation and technical writing that brought both insights and technical requirements to life.
University of Texas McCombs School of Business & College of Fine Arts
Visiting Lecturer • January 2016 – December 2016
Developed the University of Texas’ first Design Thinking curriculum in the first design practitioner partnership between UT and frog. Taught undergraduate and graduate design and non-design students in two lab settings, both focused on the application of design thinking and human centered design to real-world circumstances and business situations.
Comcast Interactive Media
User Experience Designer • March 2009 – July 2010
Lead designer for the first iPad digital DVR apps used by 40 million subscribers nationwide; collaborated with product owners and developers to meet user needs with expanded technical capabilities; led design of experimental TV experiences that earned two patents for motion design.
EPAM Formerly Empathy Lab
Interaction Designer • June 2008 – October 2008
Designed and delivered complex healthcare and financial services web portals, leading interaction design, information architecture, usability research, and visual design. Developed brand assets, refined in-development products, and provided detailed documentation to ensure seamless software delivery.
Electronic Ink
Associate Interaction Designer • June 2007 – February 2008
Pioneered the service design practice, leading program development, qualitative research, and data modeling, with findings presented to clients and conferences. Designed and tested healthcare and financial services web platforms through immersive ethnographic research, interaction design, and usability testing. Delivered service design solutions for the University of Pennsylvania Hospital System, visualizing data, building prototypes, and contributing to a published book on service design.
TPS Consulting
Interaction Designer • October 2006 - April 2007
Designed information architecture and technical documentation for a Georgia Port Authority contract, collaborating within a small team to deliver user-centric solutions while building foundational skills in design and stakeholder alignment.