I’m a UX and product design leader with 25+ years of experience driving end-to-end product development—from setting vision and building teams from the ground up to rolling up my sleeves and delivering thoughtful, high-impact design solutions. I’ve scaled organizations from 0 to 100+ across UX, research, and content and thrive at the intersection of strategy and execution. My strength lies in turning complexity into clarity—aligning cross-functional teams, mentoring future leaders, and designing intuitive, scalable experiences that solve real user and business problems.

Key Skills

• Product vision, strategy, and roadmap
• Enterprise collaboration and design direction alignment
• Leading coaching and scaling distributed teams

EXPERIENCE

Head of User Experience, Design, & Research

Maven AGI March 2025 – Present

• Product & UX Strategy: Define and execute design strategies aligned with product and engineering to deliver best-in-class AI-driven user experiences for B2B and B2C applications.
• Conversational AI & Agent Design: Lead UX architecture for autonomous agents handling natural language interactions, real-time decision-making, and cross-channel orchestration.
• User Research & Insights: Build systems for rapid user feedback, prototype validation, and ethnographic research to inform product direction in high-velocity sprints.
• Cross-functional leadership: Partner closely with product management, engineering, GTM, and customer success to create coherent, intuitive products from inception to launch.
• Team Building & Mentorship: Scale a world-class team of product designers, UX researchers, and content strategists passionate about ethical AI and inclusive design.

Vice President of User Experience, Design, & Research

Northwestern Mutual, March 2025 – Present

• As Vice President of User Experience and Product Design at Northwestern Mutual, I lead a team of talented professionals spanning UX design, research, content, and design program management.
• Leading 1-year and 5-year experience visions and ways of working to support digital experiences transform formation across Wealth Management, Risk, Customer Web & Mobile, Advisor Experience, Practice Management, and Servicing.
• Through strategic leadership and a collaborative approach, I focus on delivering intuitive, human-centered solutions that empower our clients and financial professionals to achieve their goals confidently.
• Driving the org-wide design system approach, including brand/enterprise milestones, onboarding, and style and component framework.

Global Head of User Experience, Design, & Research

Gap Inc., Aug 2022 – Oct 2024

• Accountable for design and research at Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic (BR), and Athleta for customer and enterprise product experiences.
• Owned customer/associate journey definition  and vision for Athleta and BR Digital 
• Lead  collaboration and org buy-in across consumer brands as redesign  stakeholder
• Established KPIs for usability, delight, and preference, driving experience adoption and performance.

Chief Strategy and Experience Officer (CXO)

Velir, Sep 2019 – Jun 2017

• Developed Velir’s design, digital strategy, marketing, and user experience (UX) services.
• Executive lead for client rebranding, digital transformation, marketing, and product development engagements.
• Defined engagement strategy through vision development, design thinking, omnichannel marketing, and road mapping approaches.
• Led growth of brand marketing and UX capabilities to acquisition via P&E firm.

Head of Product & Brand Design

TripAdvisor, Jun 2017 – Sep 2019

• Launched .com and App trip planning, social travel feed, and redesigned core experience pages (Home, PDP, PLP, etc) across business units concurrently with ongoing funnel optimization. 
• Led Tripadvisor’s product design team scaling and transformation from a siloed feature lead to a connected goal-oriented team with customer and brand-centric principles.
• Deployed journey-based experiences across business units via design system launch.

Senior Vice President, Experience (Brand & Design)

Genuine, June 2013 – June 2017

• Established Genuine’s UX and Strategy teams, defining roles and methodologies.
• Defined vision and approach for Red Hat Partner Portal, Titleist Digital Global Strategy, and Rekkitt.
• Lead MassMutual digital experiences and design team evaluation and re-organization.
• Led strategy, approach, and design as executive lead for Partners Healthcare .com and Reckitt Digital. b. Good Mobile app, and digital transformation for Modern Woodmam, Owens & Minor,  and Sentry Insurance.
• Led growth of brand marketing and UX capabilities to acquisition through P&E exit.

Earlier  Highlights   1995 – 2013

• Ongoing Design Management & Leadership
  • Chrysler/Ram, Mass Mutual, Imprivata,
• Redesigns
  • Fidelity Net benefits, Great-west.com, The Hartford, Mass Mutual;
• Global Redesigns with Localization Strategy
  • Nokia.com, Akamai.com,  ING, Reebok.com,  Titleist.com,
• Digital Northstar/Transformation
  • Porsche, Boehringer Ingelheim, Owens & Minor, Sentry; 
• Saas & Application Definition
  • Redhat, Paychex, Analog Devices, Smith & Nephew, Health Dialog, Brooks Automation

EDUCATION

Master of Arts Degree in Interactive Design and Game Development

Savannah College of Art and Design

Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Visual Design

University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth