About
The short version
I got into design because I liked making things. I stayed because I realized design is how you think through hard problems — not just how you make them look good.
My career started in New York, working in ad-tech and digital media — places like Outbrain, Vibrant Media, and Buongiorno. Fast-moving, scrappy environments where I learned to ship under pressure and to care deeply about the details even when nobody was watching. That early grind taught me craft, but more importantly, it taught me that good design is only as valuable as the problem it solves.
From there, I moved into a player-coach role at Knewton, leading design for an adaptive learning product. That's where I started building the instinct I rely on now: stay close enough to the work to make real decisions, senior enough to align the people around it. After Knewton, I went independent — spent a few years as a digital nomad, consulting for startups and global brands including LEGO Group. Working across industries and cultures confirmed what I already suspected: the principles that make products great are universal, even when the context is completely different.
Along the way, I taught product design at General Assembly and founded TheCoop, a career accelerator for aspiring designers and engineers. Teaching sharpened my thinking — if you can't explain your design rationale clearly, you probably haven't thought it through.
More recently, I led design organizations at Dooly and AstrumU. At Dooly, I built a seven-person design team from scratch and sat on the senior leadership team, shaping product strategy for an AI-driven sales platform. At AstrumU, I led design and product vision for an AI data platform building the infrastructure for a skills-based economy. Both roles reinforced the same lesson: the hardest design problems aren't on the screen. They're about getting the right people aligned on what to build, and why.
How I Lead
Clarity before craft.
The most important design decision is rarely a design decision. It's getting everyone aligned on what we're solving, why it matters, and how we'll know it worked. I build alignment infrastructure — product catalogs, OKR frameworks, shared user journeys — because teams with clarity move faster than teams with talent.
Close enough to decide, senior enough to align.
I'm a player-coach. I stay close enough to the work to make real design and product decisions, and senior enough to align the room when priorities conflict. I don't manage from a distance, and I don't design in isolation.
Systems over heroics.
Good design orgs don't depend on one person having a great week. I build the infrastructure that makes quality repeatable — shared principles, structured critique, growth frameworks, quality standards. The system should produce good work even when I'm not in the room.
Orientation before flexibility.
Users don't fail because products lack features. They fail because products lack guidance. I design for confidence first — helping people understand what's possible and where to start — before adding flexibility and power.
Start with the room.
Most design problems are alignment problems. The first move is getting the right people together — product, engineering, data, leadership — and building a shared understanding before anyone opens Figma. Strong opinions, loosely held. Disagree and commit. Move forward together.
What I'm doing now
I'm building new products from zero — the kind of early-stage, ambiguous work where you're figuring out what the thing even is before you design it. I'm also rethinking how design and product leadership work when AI is a core part of the stack, not just a feature bolted on. That's the question I keep coming back to: what does good product thinking look like when the tools are fundamentally different?