Growing businesses by understanding customer needs — that’s my happy place.

Every tech company faces the constant threat of stagnation. As technology advances at an accelerating pace, user expectations soar, and businesses grapple with increasingly complex challenges, the pressure to evolve is relentless.

Using that pressure to innovate and launch solutions fast is what I love doing. My sweet spot is taking the assets and existing value of a company and merging that with the evolving customer needs to accelerate growth. I approach the complexities that tech businesses face with a mind toward rapid and iterative product launches leveraging existing assets, while capturing new value measured in customer satisfaction, adoption, and expansion.

I’ve spent 20+ years driving products that expanded customer segments, repositioned portfolios for new markets, or re-invented technology for industries that begged for modernized thinking. Two degrees in Computer Science coupled with years of experience driving product and design vision and execution, plus a passion for building teams that love what they are doing produces measurable results – I nuture teams that love building because they understand their customer, and deliver products those customers love. It prevents stagnation and leverages that pressure to evolve in a positive, productive way to grow the business.

ADVOCATING FOR customerS

Designing and leading in B2B for nearly 20 years gives me a deep awareness of the distinction between customers and users, and the needs of both. I've dedicated myself to becoming the person that both can turn to: they know that I will not just listen but will care about what they have to say and will take action. I absorb the experiences that they have so that I can continually improve the service they receive. I am happy representing companies with a mission and vision to help people, and I've established scalable frameworks for other employees to gain awareness of user and customer needs.

SEEKING INSPIRATION

Inspiration and adventure come in many forms. I love adventures outside of my local world to gain perspective—whether rock climbing in Thailand, driving the narrow roads of Ireland, or seeing the beauty of Nova Scotia to being a parent sharing an adventure book and spontaneous dance parties. Seeing what’s beneath all of that helps to build a constant pace of reinventing myself, my work, everything around me.

LEADING CHANGE

Being a change leader requires the right balance of organizational influence, business strategy, design expertise, and team building. I've infused strategic design practice from the inside (not via a consultant). I've led major shifts from a small team of downstream designers to a world-class, end-to-end, multi-disciplinary, global user experience team. I've lead the strategy to completely revamp an industry-leading product line. I've entirely reconfigured a product portfolio and positioning. I've repeatedly rallied multiple teams outside of my hierarchical domain around a well-articulated strategy and plan. I’ve led a large disconnected development team to a more efficient, more streamlined development practice. Leadership requires passion for the problem, steadfast patience, customer insight, and a knack for bringing out the best in people to affect the needed change.

BRINGING THE SILLY

I believe in the power of play, including in the workplace. Being creative, being willing to wrong, and simultaneously diving deep isn’t easy. Play, fun, and joy ultimately leads to better results. But leaders have to make space for it: building trust, responding positively to learning from failures, respecting their lives outside of work, and literally showing up excited about what we are doing brings out the best in people so we can dream big and make it happen.