Leadership

How I Lead

I focus on keeping product decisions clear as teams grow, so quality and speed hold at scale.

I help teams decide what to change, what to leave alone, and where design effort creates real customer and business impact.

When I joined HSE, design worked as a shared-service internal agency: two designers supporting multiple PMs, often involved late. I moved design into product teams, clarified ownership, and introduced simple rituals (design critique, discovery kickoffs, visual QA) to support better decisions.

The result was a shift from reactive delivery to a consistent way of working, with designers involved early and accountable for outcomes.

What You Can Expect from Me

• Clear decisions: teams align on what matters and where change creates value.
• Focused effort: match depth of discovery to real risk and uncertainty.
• Scalable ways of working: designers embedded in product teams, clear problem framing, use of design system to keep consistency, at scale.
• Quality protection: structured visual QA before release. Design, Engineering, and QA validate critical journeys against approved designs.
• Clear ownership: designers own outcomes, not just output.
• Credibility with Product and Engineering: predictable scope, timing, and quality.

Leadership in Practice

The practices I use to keep decisions clear and execution reliable as teams grow.

Direction & Alignment

• Turn unclear goals into clear priorities and decision criteria.
• Make trade-offs explicit and align on what “good” looks like.
• Use prototypes and concrete options to build alignment early.

Discovery & Decision-making

• Move discovery earlier to reduce late rework.
• Use user research deliberately when uncertainty is high and decisions carry real risk, and rely on proven principles and standards when the path is clear.
• Align with Product Management and Data Analytics on the signals we track and iterate based on them.

Quality & Speed

• Run design critique focused on choices, trade-offs, and what we will ship.
• Protect high-risk journeys with explicit quality gates and visual QA.
• Use the Design System to reduce design debt and speed up delivery.

Building & Scaling Teams

I scaled my team at HSE from 2 designers to a 9-person team over the years, 8 product designers embedded in 8 squads plus the first dedicated user researcher in the company's history.

The harder part was changing the operating model: from 2 designers serving multiple PMs as a shared agency, to designers owning outcomes within cross-functional teams. That required hiring differently, onboarding differently, and managing differently.

How I Hire

I hire for judgment under constraints, not portfolio polish. The topics I care most about:

• Complex problem solving: navigate ambiguity and choose the right level of depth.
• Clear reasoning: explain decisions, trade-offs, and evidence.
• Judgment under constraints: balance user needs, business goals, and delivery reality.
• Strong collaboration: effective with Product and Engineering, clear under pressure.

How I Help People Grow

• Structured onboarding focused on business, users, and end-to-end journeys.
• Regular 1:1s for coaching, decision review, and clear expectations.
• Growth tied to skills, scope, and impact.

Culture

I aim for a culture with high standards, open debate, and decisions grounded in customer and business impact.

• Trust: the base of everything.
• Continuous learning: a team habit of staying current through biweekly knowledge-sharing sessions, including hands-on AI sessions focused on day-to-day design work.
• Strong community: design critique (articulate design decisions), design guild (deliberate on design only topics: eg. customer journeys, affinity maps), design learning (knowledge-sharing session).

Takeaway

I build design teams that turn complexity into clear product decisions and measurable outcomes.