About.
I'm a principal product designer with 18+ years across agencies, startups, and FAANG. I've worked at every level, from hands-on craft to org-wide design leadership.
3 career acts.
Design Agencies
Built the foundation: visual craft, front-end, quality standards. Ran the web side at two agencies, shipping brand and product work for clients.
Startups
At Stack Overflow, helped the company cross from a developer-loved product to an enterprise business. High ambiguity, limited data, fast cycles.
At Scale
Worked on complex products at Meta, Shopify, and Riot Games. 0→1 and system-level work, on products used by billions. Shaped direction on hard surfaces and raised the bar by doing the work.
Point of view.
People and business are one problem.
Design that solves a people problem without moving the business solves half of it. The other half is making the case and getting it shipped.
Execution is cheaper, taste isn't.
Anyone can ship now. Knowing what's worth shipping is harder, and that's where the highest-leverage decisions get made.
Data-informed, not data-driven.
Use data where it sharpens the decision. When the data isn't there, design the vision anyway. Waiting for certainty is how teams stall.
Craft is a judgment call.
Push the bar on the customer journeys that matter most. Accept pragmatic trade-offs on the ones that don't. Knowing which is which is part of the work.
Design and code.
Builder at heart. I started out designing and coding front-end at the same time, and the muscle stayed. Now it means direction gets tested in real artifacts, not slides, and front-end work I make can ship. Designer first. Code means a decision doesn't wait on a handoff to become real.
How I work.
I'm most useful when the problem is still taking shape. I'm often brought in when a team needs clarity, stronger product thinking, or a better way to work through complexity.
I spot patterns: friction in the product, gaps in decision-making, ways a team could work more effectively.
This shows up most visibly in design crits, product reviews, and early-stage scoping.
When a prototype in code settles a debate faster than a document, I build the prototype.