About Me
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I am a design leader who helps companies build world-class teams and launch high-impact projects.
I'm able to immediately engage on projects at multiple levels, as an individual contributor and team leader, to maximize the value of UX within companies. At its best, design and UX are key differentiators for success with the potential to energize entire companies around the needs of their customers. EDUCATION
Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley, Education in Mathematics, Science & Technology (HCI). NSF Fellowship, University of California at Berkeley, Cognitive Science. A.B. Dartmouth College, Computer Science & Spanish (double major). EXPERIENCE / SKILLS
Build, scale and run design teams, invent and launch new products and services, identify and maximize new revenue sources, develop and optimize advertising solutions, brand partnerships, and customer-centered service strategies. Focus areas: B2B/B2C, consumer mobile, leadgen, enterprise/security, online learning, video platforms, speech input, translation, i18n, social media, photography, design sprints, creativity and innovation, UX research, brand collaboration and strategic partnerships. PRESENTATIONS / AWARDS / RECOGNITION
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LEADERSHIP & HAND-ON DESIGN
I am a hands-on design leader, brand strategist and product innovator. I help companies build world-class teams and launch high-impact products. I am a builder and innovator at heart. I love what I do and actively live the craft of design in every area of my life.
I know what it means to put the customer first and build a culture where design is a differentiator for success. I excel at taking what looks complex and difficult and making it beautiful, powerful, and easy-to-use. Recently, my focus has been on consumer mobile design for the US and global markets. Over the last 20+ years, I have gained extensive experience working with start-ups and large companies in enterprise, security, messaging, ads, social media, travel (flights, hotels, itineraries), B2B and B2C. My work in AI, personalization and machine learning goes back two decades and involves multiple products, early symbolic systems work plus 12+ patents as the lead designer and researcher for the first commercial, domain-specific LLM (pre ChatGPT).
GOJEK & GOTO GROUP
Most recently, I was the Global Head of Design for the GoTo Group in SE Asia. GoTo Group is similar to a merger of Uber, PayPal and Amazon delivering value to millions of merchants, drivers and customers and generating 28B+ USD in GTV annually by offering a mix of on-demand, e-commerce and financial technology services. At GoTo, I worked across multiple companies and business organizations to build the design language, visual identity & branding (style guides, regional positioning plans, design systems, etc). I re-organized the very large design team (300+) to better enable strategic integration points across the three main apps (Gojek, GoPay, Tokopedia) and launch a logistics platform and brand (GoTo Logistics). To empower collaboration and deliver results, I spearheaded the formation of cross-team squads tied to Centers of Excellence and launched a Creative Council to develop a unified approach to design and brand encompassing visual identity, brand marketing, design, UX writing, corp comm and a variety of other teams.
GoTo Group is the parent company for Gojek. Gojek is Indonesia’s first and fastest growing decacorn delivering an on-demand superapp for Southeast Asia. The Gojek app is the largest consumer transactional technology group on a GTV-basis in Southeast Asia. At Gojek, I was the Global Head of Design where I led a global team of 175+ designers, VPs, Directors working across dozens of products and multiple organizations through the IPO in 2022. I successfully advocated to secure funding for a Gojek Studio Team to drive innovation across the end-to-end journey and bring Silicon Valley and global perspectives into the company through invited speakers from across the industry ranging from Disney Animators to brand and design specialists.
TUBI & GODADDY
Before moving to Indonesia, I worked in San Francisco where I was the VP of Design, Brand & Research for Tubi, the leading ads-based streaming service acquired by Fox Entertainment in 2020. Before that, I was Head of Design Culture & Innovation at GoDaddy leading the teams developing website and app builders, payment solutions, digital marketing and a range of business solutions. (I am in the process of adding these to the case studies below.)
PICSART
I left Google in 2015 to become Head of UX Design & Research for PicsArt - the world's most powerful mobile editor and largest UGC-driven creative community with 130M+ MAUs. PicsArt is backed by Sequoia and has a globally distributed user base. I built up and a team of distributed UX designers and researchers across 12 time zones building mobile products for hundreds of millions of users around the world.
GOOGLE & POSTINI
I joined Google in 2006 through the acquisition of Postini, the industry-leader in cloud-based security and messaging. I had been running my own design agency when I was invited to join Positini as Head of Design & Research. I led the internationalization of the platform, launched new B2C products, and white-labeled the product thereby expanding the revenue stream and enabling the partnership with Google at a design level.
My work at Google spanned eight years across multiple products and teams. I led travel UX early on (flights & hotels), monetized Google maps to enable you to see and purchase hotel reservations. I led multiple initiatives in the Ads Innovation space ranging from leadgen and BCB/B2C with international work in China, Japan and the UK.
Ultimately I spent two years as Head of Design and Research at Google Translate (case studies below). I conducted research in India and Brazil on mobile phone users. From this work, I led AI-based innovations and patent filings in partnership with engineering and Google Brain in the areas of speech, camera, conversation and translation UX. Google Translate became one of Google's top rated apps with millions of monthly users and multiple awards from Google & Apple.
I have a relentless focus on quality and excellence. My leadership work at Postini, Google, PicsArt, GoDaddy, Tubi/Fox and Gojek and GoTo exhibited through the case studies below provide examples of my ability to build and lead collaborative, distributed and engaged design teams, develop world-class solutions, and create experiences that connect and empower people in meaningful ways.
I am a hands-on design leader, brand strategist and product innovator. I help companies build world-class teams and launch high-impact products. I am a builder and innovator at heart. I love what I do and actively live the craft of design in every area of my life.
I know what it means to put the customer first and build a culture where design is a differentiator for success. I excel at taking what looks complex and difficult and making it beautiful, powerful, and easy-to-use. Recently, my focus has been on consumer mobile design for the US and global markets. Over the last 20+ years, I have gained extensive experience working with start-ups and large companies in enterprise, security, messaging, ads, social media, travel (flights, hotels, itineraries), B2B and B2C. My work in AI, personalization and machine learning goes back two decades and involves multiple products, early symbolic systems work plus 12+ patents as the lead designer and researcher for the first commercial, domain-specific LLM (pre ChatGPT).
GOJEK & GOTO GROUP
Most recently, I was the Global Head of Design for the GoTo Group in SE Asia. GoTo Group is similar to a merger of Uber, PayPal and Amazon delivering value to millions of merchants, drivers and customers and generating 28B+ USD in GTV annually by offering a mix of on-demand, e-commerce and financial technology services. At GoTo, I worked across multiple companies and business organizations to build the design language, visual identity & branding (style guides, regional positioning plans, design systems, etc). I re-organized the very large design team (300+) to better enable strategic integration points across the three main apps (Gojek, GoPay, Tokopedia) and launch a logistics platform and brand (GoTo Logistics). To empower collaboration and deliver results, I spearheaded the formation of cross-team squads tied to Centers of Excellence and launched a Creative Council to develop a unified approach to design and brand encompassing visual identity, brand marketing, design, UX writing, corp comm and a variety of other teams.
GoTo Group is the parent company for Gojek. Gojek is Indonesia’s first and fastest growing decacorn delivering an on-demand superapp for Southeast Asia. The Gojek app is the largest consumer transactional technology group on a GTV-basis in Southeast Asia. At Gojek, I was the Global Head of Design where I led a global team of 175+ designers, VPs, Directors working across dozens of products and multiple organizations through the IPO in 2022. I successfully advocated to secure funding for a Gojek Studio Team to drive innovation across the end-to-end journey and bring Silicon Valley and global perspectives into the company through invited speakers from across the industry ranging from Disney Animators to brand and design specialists.
TUBI & GODADDY
Before moving to Indonesia, I worked in San Francisco where I was the VP of Design, Brand & Research for Tubi, the leading ads-based streaming service acquired by Fox Entertainment in 2020. Before that, I was Head of Design Culture & Innovation at GoDaddy leading the teams developing website and app builders, payment solutions, digital marketing and a range of business solutions. (I am in the process of adding these to the case studies below.)
PICSART
I left Google in 2015 to become Head of UX Design & Research for PicsArt - the world's most powerful mobile editor and largest UGC-driven creative community with 130M+ MAUs. PicsArt is backed by Sequoia and has a globally distributed user base. I built up and a team of distributed UX designers and researchers across 12 time zones building mobile products for hundreds of millions of users around the world.
GOOGLE & POSTINI
I joined Google in 2006 through the acquisition of Postini, the industry-leader in cloud-based security and messaging. I had been running my own design agency when I was invited to join Positini as Head of Design & Research. I led the internationalization of the platform, launched new B2C products, and white-labeled the product thereby expanding the revenue stream and enabling the partnership with Google at a design level.
My work at Google spanned eight years across multiple products and teams. I led travel UX early on (flights & hotels), monetized Google maps to enable you to see and purchase hotel reservations. I led multiple initiatives in the Ads Innovation space ranging from leadgen and BCB/B2C with international work in China, Japan and the UK.
Ultimately I spent two years as Head of Design and Research at Google Translate (case studies below). I conducted research in India and Brazil on mobile phone users. From this work, I led AI-based innovations and patent filings in partnership with engineering and Google Brain in the areas of speech, camera, conversation and translation UX. Google Translate became one of Google's top rated apps with millions of monthly users and multiple awards from Google & Apple.
I have a relentless focus on quality and excellence. My leadership work at Postini, Google, PicsArt, GoDaddy, Tubi/Fox and Gojek and GoTo exhibited through the case studies below provide examples of my ability to build and lead collaborative, distributed and engaged design teams, develop world-class solutions, and create experiences that connect and empower people in meaningful ways.