Work Experience

User Experience Design Manager
Paychex (remote)
June 2024 - Present

• Managed the Retirement, Platform, and Design Systems teams.
• Merged the Paychex and Paycor design systems, achieving efficiencies by leveraging our scaled architecture with engineering leaders.
• Implemented AI tools and processes that saved tens of thousands of dollars in annual spend while cutting intake times in half.
• Led the process of transitioning Retirement to a new platform, significantly improving customer feedback scores and reducing costs.

Sabbatical/Project Work
May 2023 - May 2024

• Took time to travel and improve my professional skills.
• Led design for Lexicon Services until the project was canceled.

Director of Product Design
RxVantage (remote)
November 2021 - May 2023

• Oversaw design of a new mobile and desktop data dashboard that drove six-figure upsells of our enterprise life sciences manager product.
• Led user research that uncovered major issues with our top roadmap item, leading to a seven-figure revenue pivot by delivering the treatment information most important to health care providers and patients.
• Led new cross-functional, lean UX processes with engineering and product leadership and a new design system using Figma and Storybook which increased team velocity by over 25% in Jira reports.
• Organized, hired, managed, and mentored a diverse design team.

Lead Product Designer
Very Good Security / VGS (remote)
July 2020 - October 2021

• Designed a new onboarding flow which increased free trial conversion by 250% and reduced time-to-value for the sales team by 1-2 months.
• Created a new design system with engineering using Figma and Storybook, which drove the transition of VGS properties to the new look and feel, improving accessibility, usability, aesthetics, and NPS scores.
• Designed and tested the MVP for the Payment Optimization product launch, driving millions of dollars in new revenue.

User Experience Manager
Flexera (post-acquisition, remote)
September 2018 - July 2020

• Architected Flexera’s onboarding connector, speeding time-to-value by two months and generating over $10 million in enterprise cross-sells.
• Brought Lean UX processes to the Flexera design team, dramatically improving velocity and collaboration across departments.
• Led the UI integration of RightScale products into Flexera’s portfolio, including UI updates and a new unified login portal.
• Contributed to the creation of the Flexera Design System using DSM.

User Experience Manager
RightScale Inc. (remote)
April 2010 - September 2018

• Spearheaded the design of top-ranked enterprise cloud products in the 2019 Gartner Cloud Management and 2018 Forrester Wave Hybrid Cloud magic quadrant reports.
• Drove design and research for the launch of Optima, which increased qualified enterprise leads in our target market by over 25%.
• Championed cross-functional UX practices with company leadership resulting in 40% velocity increases for both product and engineering.
• Oversaw the creation of the RightScale Design System by the UX team.
• Owned web analytics for all RightScale products, creating reports for management to track conversion data.
• Hired and mentored a talented team of UX designers and researchers.

Information Architect
Enlighten (acquired by Perficient)
May 2008 - April 2010

• Led design for six-figure, award-winning products for a range of clients, including Hunter Douglas, John Frieda, and Merrell Shoes.

Software Developer
Epic Systems Corporation
July 2005 - August 2006

• Coded a new Oncology software product (Beacon) and conducted usability research with oncologists and nurses in hospital settings.

Education

M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction
University of Michigan School of Information
August 2006 - April 2008

• Received the top School academic prize, the Margaret Mann Award.
• Won second place at the ACM-SIGCHI Student Design Competition.

B.S. Computer Science, B.A. English
Hope College
August 2001 - May 2005

• Earned the Computer Science & Literature Senior Prizes.
• Awarded the prestigious National Merit Finalist Scholarship.

Volunteer Activities

Nonprofit UX Volunteer Team Lead
2021 - 2023

• With the Boulder UX Research Meetup, I led junior UX professionals through a full UX research process to improve UX for three nonprofits.
• Nonprofits included Colorado Uplift (2021), Shadowcliff Retreat Center (2022), and the Colorado Gives Foundation (2023).

Professional Meetup Activities
2012 - Present

• Co-founded the Santa Barbara UX Meetup and UX Book Club.
• Mentored junior designers for Hexagon UX, Denver UX, and Boulder UX.

Skills

Product Design

• Accessibility standards (WCAG and 508)
• Design sprints and workshops
• Design system creation and maintenance
• Flowcharts and sitemaps
• High-fidelity mockups
• Information architecture
• Interaction design
• Prototypes (mid-high fidelity)
• Responsive design (mobile, tablet, web)
• Wireframes

UX Research

• Card sorting
• Contextual interviews
• Data-informed design analysis
• Journey maps and storyboards
• Persona creation and maintenance
• Survey creation and analysis
• Usability testing
• Web analytics and data analysis

Leadership

• Agile Scrum and Kanban processes
• Employee performance and mentorship
• Hiring management
• Lean UX processes
• OKRs and SMART goals
• Roadmap planning and strategy
• Writing and clear communication

Software Proficiency

Product Design Software

• Adobe Creative Cloud
• AI LLMs (Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT, etc.)
• Axure RP
• Balsamiq
• Figma (including AI features)
• InVision
• Miro (including AI features)
• Sketch
• Userinterviews.com
• Usertesting.com
• Zeplin

Other Software

• Appcues
• Asana
• Atlassian Suite (Confluence & Jira)
• CMS platforms (WordPress, Drupal, etc.)
• GitHub (including CoPilot)
• Google Analytics
• Google Suite
• Heap Analytics
• Hotjar
• Intercom
• Microsoft Office
• Mixpanel
• Productboard
• Salesforce
• Snowflake
• SurveyMonkey
• Visual Studio Code + Claude Code

Programming Languages

• HTML 5
• CSS3 & Sass
• JavaScript/TypeScript
• SQL