Working with Me

‍Background

I've been working as a designer and strategist for over 15 years – but those words only captures part of what I do. My life and career have been shaped by a recurring theme: walking into complex, unfamiliar domains, immersing myself deeply, and translating that understanding into products and experiences that are intuitive and accessible.

• ‍My career started at The New York Times and Google's Creative Lab — two places that taught me what it looks like when journalism, design, product and engineering teams trust each other.‍
• The last decade I spent consulting, with early-stage companies and corporate innovation teams, across fintech, biotech, publishing and dev tools. I'm proud to have helped build products used by millions of people, created pitch decks that raised tens of millions, and worked on brands that went from founding to acquisition.‍
• Co-authored the Community Canvas, a framework now used by over 300,000 community builders in 15 languages. I also teach interaction design at SVA.

“Successful problem solving requires finding the right solution to the right problem. We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem.” — Russell Ackoff

‍

How I Think

• Clarity is the craft. I strive to present ideas and communicate challenges with depth and precision. This isn’t just an effort to find the most elegant solution to the right problem, but also a way to keep all involved, informed and on the same page. Defining the problem well is half the work.
• Putting into perspective. Strategy is the work of ordering and arranging the puzzle pieces so the picture becomes obvious — grouping similar ones, looking for the edges, figuring out which connect. This leads to teams knowing what to build, in what order, and why. It's the part of the work that makes everything else fall in place.
• Untangling. Strategy is the work of ordering and arranging the pieces so the picture becomes obvious — grouping similar ones, looking for the edges, figuring out which connect. This leads to teams knowing what to build, in what order, and why. It's the part of the work that makes everything else fall into place.
• ‍Sums larger than their parts. Often my best work isn't a deliverable. It's helping someone reframe a problem they were stuck on, or facilitating a conversation that cuts through weeks of ambiguity, or running a crit where three people's half-formed ideas become one clear direction. I want the people and teams I work with to be better at what they do — not dependent on me, but sharper for having worked together.

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” — Max Planck

‍

How I Work

• Curiosity first. I pick up on subtle differences, and my inquisitive nature wants to probe anything that slightly protrudes from the narrative. I have a keen sense that there's something hiding in plain sight or waiting around the corner. At Pittsburgh Airport that meant investigating every combination of flight and airline data until the edge cases shaped the design. For terraFlow it led to a process element becoming a standalone feature.
• Depth and pace. I'm naturally drawn to go deep on a problem but also to moving quickly — two instincts that often pull in opposite directions. My growth edge is reading what the moment actually needs: when to slow down and dig deeper because the team isn't aligned or the problem isn't understood, and when to move forward with what we have because momentum matters more.‍
• Productivity. I prefer to alternate quickly between modes — meetings generate signal and feedback, quiet blocks let me research, process, and translate the new information into something concrete. I'm deliberate about this sequence because I've learned the relationship is direct: better input, better output. A sharp conversation in the morning changes what I'm capable of making that afternoon.

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anaïs Nin

‍

Why I’m Good at What I Do

• Translating across domains. When colleagues refer me to someone, they tend to say I'm curious, deeply engaged, and that I truly understand what they're trying to do. What's underneath that is a specific skill: I learn a new domain well enough to see things that people inside it sometimes overlook.
• Learning by doing. I like problems with a lot of disparate pieces that need to come together in smart, thoughtful ways. I deeply enjoy structuring, organizing, experimenting, learning by doing – it allows me to test assumptions faster, have more grounded conversations with stakeholders, and bring real evidence into product decisions.‍
• Follow through. I'm extremely dependable. When something needs to get done, I'll do what it takes to make it happen. People trust me to follow through, and I take that to heart.

“The man who says it can’t be done shouldn’t interrupt the man who is trying to do it.” — Massimo Banzi

‍

What I'm Looking For

I want to work with a team of smart, passionate builders who are committed to solving hard, substantive problems — the kind where you need to deeply understand a domain and your users and translate that complexity into something people can intuitively use. I've spent 15 years doing that across fintech, biotech, publishing, and dev tools, and I'm looking for a new challenge where I can do it with depth and continuity — as both a strategist and a maker.