Executive leader who drives results through customer focus, product vision, engaged teams, and excellence in execution.
I create teams from co-workers, stories from details, and meaning from data. I love making the complex simple, and launching products that solve problems for customers.
CPO & CTO, VARIs (2021 - present)
As a founding member of Varis’ executive team, I led the development and launch of our innovative procurement technology platform. I spearheaded product strategy, customer experience design, and development. Varis saw product-market fit with over 100 businesses, generating billions of dollars in transactions. I also played a pivotal role in securing independent funding, ultimately leading to the successful exit of the company.
Launched Beta for all-new Varis purchasing software including cataloging technology and purchasing experience
Led development, product management, product design, and brand identity — roughly 70% of the company staff including full-time employees and contractors near and off shore.
Drove customer research for requirements, and conceived the first interactive prototype of product vision, followed by collaboration with architects for baseline technical design.
Responsible for prioritizing our AI strategy to aid customers and long-term growth strategy.
Delivered Varis-specific design system to efficiency in development and consistency in design and accessibility practice
Responsible for customer roadmap on interim technology, proving market fit and supporting billions of dollars in transactions.
Executed critical improvements in roadmap planning and engineering excellence to speed delivery and increase visibility
Established the hiring practice, diverse recruiting, and inclusive culture for Varis
Head of UX, Business Intelligence & Analytics AT AWS (2020 - 2021)
Drove user insights and design for Quicksight Q, an all-new AI-based business intelligence agent for users to ask a question of their data and get the answers and visualization of the data they need. Created 20+ person multi-disciplined user experience team entirely during the COVID-19 pandemic in ~4 months. Introduced design activities to the division for redesigning existing B2B BI software, Amazon QuickSight. Introduced research activities to define core personas and usability baseline.
Head of UX and product leadership team, Amazon Business (2016 - 2020)
Drove product experience for Amazon Business, the B2B retail arm of Amazon and one of the fastest growing divisions of the company serving millions of business customers in the US, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan and India with more than $10B in annualized sales in its first 4 years. Created a world-class design function and scalable innovation and design process for the new Amazon customer: the business buyer. Responsible for the cross-functional product leadership team, design direction, front-end design system, localization, and quality of 250+ feature launches in 2018 across 40+ technology teams across Amazon, including a redesign of nearly every feature plus new innovations, resulting in more than tripling the user base in 3 years. Examples include:
Leading the design of Business Prime, the business-exclusive membership program including the brand design, product integrations, and functional and visual design of all included technology solutions.
Drove complete redesign of the account management experience for all business accounts for administrators of small to enterprise businesses to configure Amazon Business for their company. Included delivery of a new front-end design system leveraged by 20+ development teams to create a seamless experience for customers and faster delivery for development.
Led strategic design of a policy engine for customers to configure and reflect their own buying policies in the Amazon marketplace for their employees, driving 8-12X conversion of transactions when used and unblocking enterprise customers.
Launched Amazon’s first co-branded American Express credit card for small businesses including unique vertical design of the physical card as well as integrated workflows for account registration, exceeding first-year customer acquisition goals.
Created mechanisms to drive focus customer understanding and product quality including:
Built the third largest UX organization in Amazon’s consumer division in 5 studios across 4 countries to scale collaboration across all Amazon.com services, resulting in production of the company’s first framework for understanding procurement customers, based on first-hand research.
Established a cross-functional design process to drive ideation, exploration, prioritization and feasibility analysis resulting in scaling from ~20% participation in strategic proposals to 90%+, and 100% designer engagement with customers quarterly.
Led bi-weekly Product Leadership Team review process for cross-functional product teams to gain review of active programs and approval for initiating new programs or phases.
Founded Amazon’s first Business Customer Chapter of Amazon’s Customer Experience Bar Raiser organization to guide teams across the company on how to innovate on behalf of business customers.
Drove regular full-store review mechanism of the customer experience to engage senior Amazon leaders in the product experience and identify, track and improve product issues quarterly with an ~80% fix rate annually.
Presented product and customer insights to senior leaders across Amazon including SVP and CEO levels, division-wide All Hands presentations, and customer engagement days across the globe.
VP, User Experience and Product Strategy, Blackboard (2012-2016)
VP, Product and Industry Strategy, K-12 (2015-2016); VP, User Experience (2012-2015); Sr. Director, UX (2010-2012); Director, UX (2008-2010); Sr. Mgr/Product Director, UX (2007-2008)
Responsible for product strategy across a portfolio of products serving 14M+ users in a $700M customer base, based on design research and market expertise. Created an award-winning, multi-disciplinary design function, integrating seven separate companies’ design groups into one team for research, concept design, interaction design, UI design, front-end development, accessibility, localization and instructional design. Established roundtrip collaborative processes for from dev to sales to customers.
Conceived of and launched the Next Generation of Blackboard Learn, the world’s most adopted Learning Management System (LMS) with $150M+ in revenue, supporting more than 14 million global users, delivered by a team of 150+, resulting in three 2013 CODiE Awards, significant customer retention, and recognition by EdDigest for leadership. Conceived of and launched a pivotal student-centered release of the industry-leading Blackboard Learn serving as the key competitive differentiator.
Established strategy for the $110M K-12 business, driving go-to-market for the first K-12 portfolio offering, contributing to the most successful quarter ever for the business. Drove multi-year growth strategy including build/buy/partner strategies across 5+ lines of business and presented vision to customer audience of 2500+ for launch.
Released the award-winning Blackboard Collaborate product, a cloud-hosted WebRTC AV application to support a $45M customer retention objective; launched as the first use of Blackboard’s new design language.
Launched premier help system serving 6.5M users and 20M page views annually, supporting 8 products.
Grew team of 6 designers to 40 across 4 locations creating a team responsible for end-to-end user experience. Nurtured career growth of leaders to Director-level responsibilities with defined career tracks and opportunities.
Designed the world’s first fully integrated publisher and LMS experience with Blackboard Learn and McGraw-Hill Connect; the industry-leading concept led to $15M in business development with agreements across all five major publishers.
Directed release for the world’s first LMS certified in non-visual access by the National Federation of the Blind, awarded for “groundbreaking work” in accessibility and achieving the world’s first WCAG 2.0 Conformance Statement for an LMS.
Collaborated with the CEO to establish the product vision, storyboard, and functional prototype to present to 3,000+ customers and industry analysts plus thousands more online annually, and deliver the presentation.
Enabled an industry-leading localization process covering a $4M budget for 25+ languages across 8 products, including content structure, cultural expectations, vendor management, and customer feedback.
Instituted user engagement and usability assessment practices, adopted design-thinking methodologies from contextual inquiry to long-term customer engagements. Established design principles with longitudinal measurement.