Experience

Here are some of the fine people I’ve worked for over the years.

Employment

Robin Powered

Director of Product Design (01/2024–Present)

I lead the design team and am responsible for ensuring quality design work is delivered by every designer on every project. I also guide career development for my team, find opportunities for them to grow their skills and contributions to the company and their scrum teams, and push the strategic possibilities of a cohesive product design approach across all of our product surfaces.

Senior Design Manager (09/2023–01/2024)

Responsible for managing/mentoring 2 designers and leading design efforts for a company strategic pillar, aligning multiple scrum teams and keeping design efforts cohesive across all involved teams.

Lead Product Designer (02/2023–09/2023)

Responsible for supporting ongoing feature development with a scrum team by leading early stage research, design ideation, user testing, and feature refinement/design handoff. Also responsible for mentoring designers within the team and pushing strategic design initiatives forward outside my scrum team.

DEPT®

Principal Product Designer (02/2021–02/2023)

  • Led a team of internal and client designers in the ongoing evolution of an end-to-end commercial real estate lending platform for a major financial services firm.
  • Responsible as a design liaison for our largest client, contributing to daily decisions on design staffing, direction and strategy.
  • Served as direct people manager for two internal designers, with additional mentoring responsibilities for other designers.

Senior Product Designer (01/2020–02/2021)

  • Led a design team in redesigning a major wealth management platform for one of the top brokerage firms in the world.
  • Created, maintained and evangelized a design component library to assure designer/developer alignment across a 5+ squad client product org.
  • Mentored junior designers in their progression as new employees and their development as product design experts.

Virgin Pulse

UX Manager (11/2018–01/2020)

  • Created a recruitment and hiring workflow that allowed us to quickly find and hire 4 junior designers for our growing team.
  • Refined the hiring workshop process for senior-level UX design hires leading to 4 new senior designers.
  • Mentored junior designers and new design managers in adjusting to their roles and responsibilities.

Senior UX Designer (03/2018–10/2018)

  • Identified UI consistency and quality issues and implemented our first shared design system to address them.
  • Eliminated quality bottlenecks in the design-to-production process for a more consistent experience for users of our platform.
  • Contributed primarily to projects known for tight deadlines, tricky stakeholder issues, or complicated competing priorities.

East Coast Product

Director of Product Design & Strategy (06/2016–03/2018)

  • Created and led a team of product designers.
  • Implemented new design processes for a lean software product team.
  • Guided UX strategy initiatives internally and on client projects.

Fresh Tilled Soil

Director of AUX (10/2014–06/2016)

  • Executed a complete overhaul of curriculum for a UX apprenticeship program.
  • Created a new recruitment initiative resulting in a 6x increase in applicants.
  • Graduated ~40 UX apprentices positions in the Boston area and beyond.

UX Strategist (01/2014–06/2016)

  • Led strategy, research and planning on client projects.
  • Led a team of UI designers and front-end developers in implementation.
  • Pursued new strategic initiatives with clients and internally.

UX/UI Designer & Front-End Developer (01/2012–01/2014)

  • Conducted research, interviews and usability testing for client projects.
  • Created and iterated on UX/UI work for client projects.
  • Developed front-end code for prototypes, applications and sites.

Thoughtbot, Inc.

Design Apprentice (10/2011–01/2012)

  • Assisted with design/development of client projects.
  • Designed and built event marketing page for a small tech conference.
  • Studied startup technologies and processes.

Vistaprint, Inc.

Graphic Designer, Web Creative (01/2011–10/2011)

  • Created mockups and assets for Vistaprint.com.
  • Redesigned product flows to improve user experience.
  • Designed and developed social media properties.

Junior Graphic Designer, Retention Marketing (07/2009–12/2010)

  • Designed/developed HTML emails and created production standards.
  • Iterated on existing email campaigns to improve engagement metrics.
  • Created campaigns for Facebook/Twitter and improved engagement metrics.

Production Artist, Retention Marketing (06/2008–06/2009)

  • Created and maintained company standards for HTML email development.
  • Designed and developed HTML email campaigns to engage existing customers.
  • Altered existing email campaigns to improve engagement metrics.

Intern, Marketing (06/2007–08/2007)

  • Developed and validated HTML emails.
  • Created direct mail print campaigns.
  • Reorganized product image database.

Campus Design at UMass Dartmouth

Lead Designer (05/2007–05/2008)

  • Managed staff of designers, marketers and office help.
  • Monitored schedules and budgets on all projects.
  • Responsible for creative output of the entire team.

Designer (09/2006–04/2007)

  • Designed posters and collateral for campus organizations.
  • Maintained and ran wide-format printer and other physical production assets.

Education

  • Attended UMass Dartmouth, Class of 2008.
  • Received a BFA in Graphic Design & Letterform.
  • Graduated Summa Cum Laude with a GPA of 3.862.

Skills

  • User experience design & strategy: Advanced
  • Interaction/UI design: Advanced
  • Information architecture: Advanced
  • User research and usability testing: Advanced
  • Visual design/typography: Advanced
  • HTML and CSS: Advanced
  • Javascript/jQuery: Intermediate

Other