Design leadership values

I am driven to find savvy ways to integrate the benefits of design into everything an organization does—from identifying life-improving impacts for people, to holding ourselves accountable to meaningful outcomes, to supporting design teams, processes, operations, and quality.

All the while, I stay focused on what we say “yes” to given finite energy, resources, and time, and to ensure we can see and others can see our impact.

Strengths

  • Design impact

  • Design teams

  • Design quality

  • Design community

  • Design for accessibility & equity

I support teams and organizations through:

Illustration of arrow pointing downward pushing ripples outward.

Design impact

  • Guiding design teams to elicit meaningful impacts and outcomes, and finding the best strategies for success.

  • Building strong working relationships with other executives and practices leads across the portfolio.

  • Keeping our goals and portfolios aligned through regular 1:1s and horizon check meetings.

  • Anticipating risks and identifying opportunities across the portfolio, and surfacing and addressing issues before they grow.

  • Representing design in town halls, strategy decks, planning cycles, and org design.

Illustration of three figures representing a team.

Design teams

  • Developing high performing teams who “pass the elevator back down”.

  • Supporting and helping grow the careers of my direct reports and their team members.

  • Ensuring designers have the trust, psychological safety and creative space to develop and do their best work.

  • Providing timely and clear feedback, and working through issues together.

  • Building inclusive and diverse teams, and recognizing everyone’s unique contributions.

  • Caring about my teams, peers, and partners as people.

Illustration of a computer monitor with a series of checkmarks indicating design quality.

Design quality

  • Ensuring product development is user-driven by integrating user research and design strategy.

  • Supporting the development of organization-wide design principles, standards, and training.

  • Strengthening design quality with collaborative accountability and governance structures.

  • Helping design managers prioritize competing priorities across stakeholders and multiple projects.

  • Evaluating processes for their ROI and removing or simplifying cumbersome processes.

  • Infusing inspiration from design and other disciplines.

Illustration of a series of concentric overlapping circles, meant to convey community.

Design community

  • Helping everyone in the organization see how they can benefit from employing human-centered and design approaches.

  • Building connections, partnerships, interest, and collegiality amongst colleagues within and outside the organization.

  • Identifying design-curious folx and connecting them with resources, connections, and opportunities to transition into design.

Illustration of a figure with outstretched arms.

Design for access & equity

  • Developing frameworks and processes for thinking about accessibility, equity, and trauma from the start, and ensuring that this consideration is the whole team’s job.

  • Ensuring design and delivered solutions go beyond the minimum requirements for accessibility.

  • Considering design ethics and sustainability into the earliest phases of our design work and all along the way.

Credits: Design impact illustration (Justin Blake, Noun Project); design teams illustration (Justin Blake, Noun Project); design quality illustration (roughen.line, Noun Project); design community illustration (BOCK, Noun Project); design fro accessibility and equity illustration (Justin Blake; Noun Project).