How I Lead
15 yrs+ in product design across pre-seed startups to publicly traded companies. I have built design practices from the ground up, transitioned and scaled teams.
At a glance
15 yrs+ in product design from pre-seed —> publicly traded companies
Three design practices built from the ground up
Managed intern —> staff product designers, including product managers, product ops, and people managers
Delivered work in student safety, healthtech, and fintech where the cost of being wrong is real
Operating altitude
Where I spend my time changes with what the product needs.
I get close to the work when learning is the bottleneck.
In 0-to-1 work, I run discovery and build prototypes myself, often in Cursor or Claude Code. Working directly with users and stakeholders, I build prototypes to make learning faster without important details getting lost as they pass between people.
I build systems when incoherence is the risk.
Design principles, trust frameworks, releases, and component libraries with governance attached. These structures help a team ship consistently without waiting for my direction.
I move up when I become the bottleneck.
The team owns the work. I stay close to the consequential decisions and help protect the quality of the experience without becoming another approval layer.
I re-enter when the evidence calls for it.
When a product manager departed three months before a scheduled general release, I stepped in to lead the product squad through delivery. I set priorities, aligned product, design, and engineering around the remaining decisions, and kept the team moving toward launch.
How quality holds without me
My mechanisms are clear: expectations written down, weekly team critiques, principles used to settle real disagreements, and releases with clear measurable criteria.
At Heard, three major onboarding releases shipped over two years with progressively less of my direct involvement. The outcomes improved with each release.
At Daloopa, Scout moved from alpha to GA with clear, shared standards for quality, rather than relying on my approval at every step.
How I scale design teams
I have scaled teams in three ways:
Being a founding product designer
I have been and hired the first designers and built the practice around them. That meant establishing research, critique, and craft bars as working habits, defining how design partnered with product and engineering, and earning influence through the work.
In size and seniority
Growing a team is not just adding people. It is adding levels, clarifying what each level means, and defending those definitions when promotion and calibration decisions become difficult. I have led teams spanning staff through mid-level product design, plus content design. When the span of care became too large for one leader, I built the management layer the team needed.
In capability
A team that ships more is not necessarily a team that decides better. Better decisions come from meaningful ownership, work scoped one step beyond someone’s current level, gates instead of approvals, and feedback delivered while it can still affect the outcome.
How I build organizations
Most recently, I restructured a product organization as it grew and added more products to the suite. I introduced a management layer with two product management leads, rolled out a product operations function with its own manager, and rebalanced ownership across products. The organization operated across the United States and India.
How people grow
Every designer I have managed has grown in scope, level, or both. They did the growing. My job was to create the conditions: explicit expectations, career goals connected to consequential work, and direct feedback early enough to matter.
One product designer fundamentally changed how they worked. Their problem framing became sharper, their ownership expanded, and their work moved from needing direction to setting the standard for others. They earned a promotion to senior and took sole ownership of a full design system rebuild.
At Heard, I grew a multidisciplinary team through the company’s transition from operations-led to product-led. Two designers were on promotion track when a workforce reduction ended that chapter.
I do not create artificial exercises for growth. I give people real work slightly beyond their current scope, then provide the context and guardrails they need to own it.
How I run an AI-native team
I use AI tools every day and expect my teams to learn by using them. We use Claude Code and Cursor for prototyping and production, AI-assisted research synthesis, and working sessions where we reconsider the practice as the tools change.
The proof is in the work. I built Scout’s first four prototypes using AI coding tools. A designer on my team rebuilt our design system in Claude Code. Our discovery-to-prototype cycle went from sprints to days.
Leading beyond design
When Daloopa needed one leader across the product organization, I stepped in as interim Product Director. I led product management, product design, product operations, and product content — including managing managers. When the company hired a permanent leader, I handed the organization over.