Ambiguous behavior
Defines the customer problem when intent, feedback, and product behavior are still emerging.
About
I’m most useful when the work is commercially important, behaviorally complex, and too cross-functional for design to sit downstream.
I help teams connect research, product direction, analytics, marketing, operations, and design around what customers need and what the business needs to change.
Executive positioning
Product design leadership for growth, loyalty, platform, and complex product environments.
My best work sits where loyalty, rewards, research, operator workflows, trust, and platform complexity all shape the customer experience. I’m most useful when a company needs stronger product framing, sharper cross-functional decisions, and a design organization that can scale quality through people.
Best fit
Director Product Design and senior design leadership roles across growth, loyalty, platform, emerging technology, and complex product environments.
Operating pattern
Turns ambiguous product behavior into sharper direction, stronger team rhythms, and more trusted business decisions.
Leadership
AI-era product leadership is still product leadership.
My value is not model engineering. It is product judgment: framing behavior, making product decisions legible, connecting research to direction, and helping teams build trust into complex experiences.
Trust and control
Focuses teams on confidence, recovery paths, and user understanding in complex experiences.
Executive leverage
Turns research and product signals into prioritization and narratives leaders can act on.
Leadership Philosophy
How I think about the role at Director altitude.
The goal is not only to improve product quality. It is to improve how a company frames bets, aligns teams, and turns design into a more trusted business lever.
The strongest design leaders do more than raise the quality of artifacts. They improve the quality of product decisions.
That means shaping the problem before the work is overly constrained, translating customer and operator signals into product direction, and helping teams reason about business impact with more clarity.
It also means building stronger managers, clearer quality standards, and better operating rhythms so the organization can scale without depending on one leader to personally intervene in every decision.
Executive Fit
What I believe the job actually is.
At Director level, design leadership is less about having the final answer personally and more about improving how an organization frames, chooses, and ships the right work.
What I optimize for
Better product bets, stronger operating rhythms, and measurable business outcomes
What I avoid
Design leadership that stays trapped at the artifact or feature level
What I build
Decision quality that compounds across people, products, and markets
Leadership Scope
The role scaled through people, standards, and decision forums.
A concise view of the organizational scope behind the case studies: team growth, direct management, career progression, manager development, hiring, and executive-facing decisions.
Core org growth
3 -> 15
Team grew from 3 to 15 across Design, Research, and Content, with a peak of 21.
Direct reports
8
Managed up to 8 direct reports across product design and related disciplines.
Research strategy partners
15
Supported 13 designers and 2 researchers during research-led product strategy work.
Career promotions
6
Supported growth across IC, Senior IC, Lead Designer, and Manager levels.
Leaders developed
4
Developed 2 managers and 2 lead designers.
Hiring board
UXD
Served on interview panels and hiring committees for design, research, and leadership roles.
Executive forums
SVP / VP
Facilitated product, design, research, and decision forums with senior stakeholders.
Executive Decisions
Decisions I influenced from ambiguity to commitment.
The strongest leadership signal is not artifact production. It is changing what teams choose before the work hardens into delivery.
Decision 01
Shifted Generosity from disconnected promotions to a clearer customer value model.
Influence
Reframed rewards, loyalty, CRM, and promotional mechanics as one relationship customers could understand and return to.
Executive signal
Moved the conversation from feature delivery to product direction, measurement, and market portability.
Decision 02
Prioritized foundational rewards clarity before deeper gamification.
Influence
Focused teams first on value visibility, reward comprehension, and progression so later mechanics had a stronger behavioral base.
Executive signal
Protected the roadmap from jumping to novelty before the underlying customer understanding and operating model were strong enough.
Decision 03
Rebuilt research operations around product-confidence signals.
Influence
Introduced decision signals around usability, understanding, engagement, and perceived generosity so teams could judge product quality before and after launch.
Executive signal
Turned research from findings delivery into a repeatable input for prioritization, product confidence, and executive decision-making.
Leadership Proof
The strongest signal is not one launch. It is a repeated pattern of portfolio-level design leadership.
This is the layer hiring managers often need most: evidence that the work scales through managers, teams, product direction, and decision quality.
Management Scope
Scale quality through managers and operating rhythms
- Builds critique standards, growth conversations, and team rhythms that make strong design judgment repeatable across a portfolio.
- Works through design managers, senior designers, and cross-functional partners rather than relying on personal craft intervention.
- Treats team development as product leverage, not as support work that happens after shipping.
Product Scope
Lead across multi-surface growth portfolios
- Most credible in loyalty, rewards, growth, retention, and cross-channel product work.
- Used to environments where product, CRM, marketing, operations, analytics, and research all shape the customer experience.
- Best fit for companies where design has to connect service complexity, product strategy, and measurable outcomes.
Executive Scope
Improve decision quality at scale
- Helps organizations frame better bets, create shared language, and improve how product decisions get made.
- Adds value where leaders need sharper prioritization, stronger narratives, and more trusted design judgment.
- Targeting Director roles first, with strong relevance for Senior Manager roles that carry business-critical design scope.
Professional Leadership
How I strengthen organizations, not just products.
Hiring, communities of practice, speaking, mentorship, and community involvement show the leadership layer around the work: raising standards, creating alignment, building confidence, and helping teams mature.
Organizational impact
This work strengthened hiring quality, design maturity, research maturity, executive communication, and cross-functional alignment across the Casino organization.
Professional Leadership
Organization-building beyond the product surface.
Leadership credibility beyond shipped product work: raising the hiring bar, improving shared standards, and strengthening how Design, Research, and Content operated together.
FanDuel / Flutter Entertainment2022-2026
FanDuel UXD Interview Board & Hiring Committees
- Helped scale the Casino Design, Research, and Content organization by evaluating Product Design, UX Research, and Design Leadership candidates.
- Raised hiring quality by assessing product thinking, design craft, research judgment, collaboration, leadership potential, and organizational fit.
- Created stronger signal for hiring decisions as the organization grew from a small team into a larger multidisciplinary function.
- Contributed to building a higher-performing multidisciplinary organization, not just filling open roles.
FanDuel UXD2022-2026
Communities of Practice
- Strengthened design quality and research maturity through Design Leadership, Product Design, and UX Research Communities of Practice.
- Established shared practices that made product decisions more consistent across teams.
- Improved cross-functional alignment by turning methods, critiques, and research practices into shared operating language.
Interaction Design Foundation
NYC Community Leader
- Built local design-community momentum through networking, design discussion, and community learning.
- Extended the same leadership philosophy outside work: create space for people to learn, connect, and grow.
Speaking & Thought Leadership
Turning product direction into shared understanding.
Executive-level design leadership depends on making direction understandable. These forums show how I communicated product priorities, customer experience decisions, and design judgment across internal and external audiences.
FanDuel / Flutter Entertainment2022-2026
Company All Hands, Product Vision Summits, and Hackathons
- Translated product and customer experience strategy into narratives for company All Hands and Product Vision Summit audiences.
- Helped leaders and teams understand product direction, customer experience initiatives, and innovation opportunities.
- Used Hackathons and concept presentations to make emerging product ideas concrete enough for discussion and prioritization.
- Facilitated Product & Design Reviews, UX Research Roadmaps, Design Leadership meetings, and executive strategy discussions involving VP and SVP stakeholders.
Interaction Design Foundation NYC
Product Design Processes
- Made product design methods, product thinking, and leadership practices accessible to members of the NYC design community.
UX of EdTech PodcastApproximately 2019
Podcast Guest
- Shared practical perspective on UX, education technology, and applying user-centered design within learning environments.
Community Leadership
Community coaching as leadership practice.
Compressed here because the executive signal is simple: the same coaching instincts show up outside work through trust, standards, and team culture.
Somers Youth Football
Youth Football Coach & Program Leader
- Coach youth athletes in leadership, teamwork, accountability, resilience, and confidence.
- Partner with families and coaching staff to create a positive, growth-oriented team culture.
My leadership style is equal parts framing, coaching, and standards. The goal is to help teams make better bets and build the confidence to execute them well.
John Lewis on leadership philosophy
Core Principles
How I lead teams and shape product organizations.
01
Lead with framing
Ambitious teams rarely fail because they lack ideas. They struggle when the opportunity, success criteria, and tradeoffs are not clearly framed.
02
Make research usable
Research should do more than validate a screen. It should sharpen strategy, expose decision risk, and help executives see the shape of the opportunity.
03
Build durable design organizations
Strong organizations are built through clear expectations, quality standards, coaching, and operating rhythms that help good designers become influential leaders.
Leadership Arc
A trajectory built around increasingly systemic problems.
The shape of my career has moved from experience design to portfolio thinking to design leadership at scale.
Growth
Finding leverage in ambiguous product spaces
I gravitated toward complex environments where product, marketing, and operations needed a translator who could connect customer needs to business bets.
Loyalty
Designing for retention, rewards, and ecosystem behavior
My work expanded from individual features into end-to-end systems where generosity, value exchange, and cross-channel behavior shape customer outcomes.
Leadership
Scaling teams, rituals, and experience quality
Today I focus on multiplying design impact through managers, decision frameworks, and stronger partnership across product and executive stakeholders.
How I Operate
What teams and partners tend to get from me.
Role Fit
The environments where I’m most useful
- Product Design Director for growth, loyalty, retention, or platform ecosystems
- Senior design leadership roles that require executive influence and org scaling
- Teams navigating ambiguity across multiple products, channels, or customer touchpoints
Operating Strengths
The capabilities I bring into the room
- Executive alignment around product bets and tradeoffs
- Cross-functional leadership across product, research, marketing, and operations
- Design management systems that raise quality through people, not heroics
- Research synthesis that becomes strategic direction instead of passive insight
Portfolio Notes
A leadership portfolio built for discretion as well as clarity.
- Case studies are intentionally written at the leadership and system level to respect confidentiality.
- Visual artifacts now include selected redacted screens and working materials chosen to make the work more concrete without exposing sensitive details.
- Detailed metrics, internal tools, and redacted materials can be shared in live conversations where appropriate.
Contact
Building the next chapter of design leadership.
Open to Product Design Director opportunities across growth, platform, loyalty, and product ecosystem leadership.
Get in touch
Based in the U.S. and open to remote leadership conversations.