Summary

With over ten years of experience in design and leadership, I've tackled challenging projects that sharpened my skills and strengthened collaboration with product owners, boosting design maturity in organizations. My background in Information Technology provides a solid understanding of the software development lifecycle and fosters seamless communication with developers.

Farmers Insurance Group– Product Design Team Lead
07/21—Present

Lead Product Designer and People Leader for Farmers' enterprise digital products, focusing on consumer and agent-facing self-service portals.

  • MetLife Integration: Partnered with product owners to integrate MetLife insurance policies into Farmers, blending MetLife's business logic into an MVP for a seamless and efficient workflow.

  • Brand Reconciliation: Unified Foremost and Farmers brands into a cohesive design system, streamlining the codebase. Led collaborative workshops across both brands to align goals and improve customer workflows.

  • Hybrid eSign Product: Tasked with improving the completion rate of the signing ceremony for policy contingencies by 10% to 69.5% from 59.5% by identifying and addressing the causes of customer drop-offs.

  • Design thinking: Evangelized the process of design thinking and leading with design with product managers, product owners and developers.

  • People Leadership: Foster professional growth within my team through one-on-one discussions and team design reviews. Collaborate with the UX Director and Head of Design to shape end-of-year reviews and goal-setting initiatives for direct reports.


My core strengths in this role

  1. Leadership in Digital Product Management

  2. User Experience (UX) Design and Strategy

  3. Cross-Functional Team Collaboration

  4. Stakeholder Engagement and Communication

  5. Strategic Planning and Execution

  6. Problem Solving and Innovation

  7. Achieving High User Adoption and Engagement Rates

Cast & Crew Entertainment | Lead UX/UI Design Manager
05/20—07/21

UX department manager for Cast and Crew suite of payroll and financial SaaS products for the entertainment industry.

  • Hired to establish UX/UI processes within a newly formed product department.

  • Designed workflows and product enhancements tailored to diverse user types, roles, and permissions for onboarding, timekeeping, and other financial SaaS products.

  • Boosted user adoption rates through Pendo guides, surveys, and funnel analytics.

  • Delivered detailed product design documentation to developers, ensuring clear communication of interaction and design concepts.

  • Led workshops, stakeholder interviews, and usability testing with studio department heads and crew members from feature films and TV productions.

  • Facilitated persona workshops with internal cross-functional teams.

  • Managed and maintained a comprehensive design system across the software suite.

M&C Saatchi Worldwide | Senior UX Designer
08/18—Present (Contract)

Involved in the full product lifecycle and discovery for the redesign and strategic thinking for Herbalife.com. My role and responsibilities include working with other agency partners and cross-functional teams within Herbalife.

  • Conducted in-person stakeholder interviews with the C-suite, distributors and Herbalife’s customers.

  • Document and present the underlying themes and problem statements.

  • Analyze existing customer journey diary videos for customer pain points to help guide recommended improvements to the current online experience.

  • Facilitated workshops to uncover the level of effort/reward for features, epic, and stories.

  • Wire framed mobile experience showing the user's journey through various shopping funnels while depicting value streams and social channel entry points into content areas for repeat orders.

MXM (Part of Accenture Interactive)  | UX Lead
01/18—07/18 (Contract)

Collaborated with product managers, developers, and business teams to design new and innovative products that include enterprise and B2C solutions on the Johnson Johnson's Acuvue and Allergan accounts.

Edmunds.com | UX LEAD
10/16—12/17
 

As Lead UX Designer, I shaped the strategic direction of Edmunds' consumer-facing products, including the Car Buying Platform and Member Services portfolio. Collaborating with cross-functional teams in a fast-paced agile environment, I led key product initiatives alongside product managers, directors, and the research team. Recognized for my contributions to the UX department, I was awarded a merit increase for exceptional performance.

  • Increased customer Return Rate on the Edmunds membership services platform by 60% compared to 17% on a previous version resulting in 23k users coming back 2x a month leading to better quality leads.

  • Worked in an experimental R&D unit within Edmunds called Digital Futures. The Car Buying Platform team developed a new product to streamline the car buying process and sell vehicles direct to consumers.

  • Redesigned the Edmunds car comparison tool based on user interviews and card sorting exercises. Resulting in a more engaging feature-rich tool fitting the shoppers’ decision-making process as they compare vehicles.

  • Conducted moderated user testing for the car buying platform resulting in improved user experience.

  • Directed and mentored associate UX designers.

Hoverstate | Sr. UX Designer
11/15—10/16

Hoverstate is a digital agency specializing in creating innovative solutions in technology for the health and wellness industry. I work closely with the creative director and other stakeholders to establish a UX strategy for a new product on the UnitedHealthcare small business health insurance website.

  • Involved in strategic planning from ideation through prototyping and testing.

  • Established user workflow diagrams for new products using UML notation.

  • Conducted extensive remote user testing on existing functionality and new products to uncover user pain points. Testing experiments included developing test roadmap, writing the test script, A/B, multivariate and card sorting exercises.

  • Evaluated qualitative and quantitative data from testing results and suggested recommended improvements for better usability based on heuristic methodologies.

  • Shorten the development life cycle saving $60,000 in development cost on a social media campaign for Blue Cross of Idaho, using Unbounce to deliver and optimize landing page performance for better conversion.

MobileCause | Lead UX/UI Designer

12/14 – 07-15 (Contract)

My role as the Lead UX UI designer is to improve the existing user flow for a cloud-based SAAS solution to help non-profit organizations gain new donors, increase recurring gifts and engage supporters.

  • Improved the information architecture (IA) for the customer-facing dashboard and front-end (UI) based on feedback from the customer success team and non-profit clientele.

  • Received a 90% positive feedback from users of the redesigned donation form setup page by implementing an accordion view.

  • Lead UX/UI strategy of new product development and iterative refinements to existing product features.

  • Designed MobileCause point of sale iOS and Android App from inception through current release, which has been used to raise over $400,000 to date.

Sonic Electronix.com | Sr. UX/UI Designer / Creative Manager
05/13-10/14

As the Sr. UX designer my role was to lead, research and complete minimum viable user centric design initiatives for Sonic Electronix business objectives and its customers. This resulted in a frictionless user experience to purchase a car and home audio products online.

  • Simplified the return policy process for users increasing conversion 8 to 9% on the OnClick event. Compared to the old page which converted less than 1%.

  • Improved the purchasing funnel conversion rate to 0.88% resulting in a 12.8% YoY revenue increase.

  • Spearheaded usability studies and interviews in the wild. Which resulted in decreased page abandonment and increased conversion rate.

  • Conducted multivariate testing to measuring the effectiveness of design combinations.

  • Mentored creative talent to ensure consistent quality standards throughout all social media channels, affiliate marketing, email campaigns, and onsite web assets.

Ballistic Designs,inc. | Owner / UX/UI designer
06/03-05/13

Owned and operated my own creative studio for ten years producing unique branding and custom web solutions for clients in the health insurance, automotive and technology industries.

  • Increased online sales for Piloti.com (driving shoe manufacturer) by 400% from the previous year by enhancing the website’s functionality and strengthening the company’s branding programs online and offline.

  • Gathered project requirements from stakeholders, marketing directors, and product managers. Document website architecture using sitemaps and UML diagrams for user flow.

  • I supervised a freelance pool of programmers (on and off-shore), designers,
    and copywriters.

  • Strategized with copywriters in developing marketing campaigns and content creation to ensure consistent messaging across multiple marketing channels.

Achievement:
Launched my own online golf reservations system called “Level2-Golf” for public and private golf courses.

Freelance | Art Director

  • The Walt Disney Corporation

  • 360 Designs

  • Direct TV

  • The Dupuis Group

  • The Identity Group

Tools of the Trade

  • Invision

  • Sketch

  • Axure 8.0

  • Balsamiq Mockups,

  • Adobe Photoshop CC

  • Adobe Dreamweaver CC

  • Adobe Illustrator CC

  • Optimizely

  • Unbounced

  • Microsoft Office

  • Google Docs

  • Browser Developer Tools

  • MySql Workbench

  • Sublime Text

  • Coda

  • WordPress

  • Megento

Summary of Skills

  • User Experience Design (UX)

  • User Interface Design (UI)

  • Interaction Design

  • HCI (Human Computer Interaction)

  • Usability Testing

  • User Research

  • Web Project Management

  • Product QA

  • Product Manager

  • Wireframes

  • Rapid Prototyping

  • User Centered Design Best Practices

  • Hierarchical Task Analysis, Information Architect

  • Entity Relationship Diagramming

  • Google Analytics

  • HTML/CSS coding and browser editing

  • JQuery libraries (fundamental understanding)

  • Bootstrap (fundamental understanding),

  • Creative Direction

  • Design Mentoring

  • Email Campaigns

  • Copywriting/Message Development

  • Conceptual Thinker

Education

Capella University

B.S. in IT Technology with an Emphasis in Systems Development for Mobile Technology.
Deans list 2011-14
Graduated with honors

UCLA, University Extension

Certification
Professional designation program in graphic design and computer graphics offered in cooperation with the UCLA School of Design.