Senior Consultant, Innovation & Product Strategy

Lead research and product strategy for new products, services and partnerships at a Fortune 100 financial services company, usually as the most senior research and design practitioner on several initiatives at once.

• Asked to audit Nationwide’s digital life-insurance buying journey and assess whether to build a new product internally or partner with Bestow. Recommended partnering as the faster, stronger and less burdensome route to market, and Nationwide followed that direction.
• Represented Nationwide’s experience interests through the partnership, reviewing and directing Bestow’s design work through the 2023 launch of Nationwide Life Essentials.
• Broke a delivery deadlock on the Kadance precision-health program: Nationwide’s legacy systems couldn’t easily take a one-time customer payment. In discussions with Kadance’s CEO and Nationwide leadership, finance, product and development, recommended that Kadance own the transaction instead.
• Held experience approval over Kadance’s work on Nationwide’s behalf. Reviewed it against Nationwide’s brand and UX standards with Kadance’s lead designer, and stopped work that didn’t meet them until it did.
• Led early-stage research on new life-insurance propositions, including member-benefit concepts, informing investment decisions. Some of those recommendations were to stop, where customer value or product viability wasn’t there.
• Led research that reframed farm succession planning from document submission to long-running case management, finding that around 40% of specialists’ active case time went to re-keying information already submitted. Redefined the product around a persistent case workspace.
• When Farm Succession delivery was moving too slowly, proposed using Builder.io and AI-assisted design tools to speed it up. Made the case to AVP, VP and SVP leadership and won their support. The tools were then rolled out to Nationwide’s entire design organization, which adopted them.
• Help product managers decide what to research and shape the research direction, then turn findings into the narratives behind product and executive decisions. Present recommendations to AVP, VP and SVP leadership.
• Give ongoing research guidance to another researcher, and assign work where it makes sense.

Product Strategy & UX Research Consultant — AMLOS

An outside collaborator on Canon’s internal innovation team, alongside my full-time roles.

Led research, product strategy and experience design for Canon’s AMLOS collaborative camera platform, helping take an emerging technology from early concept through commercial launch.

• As the sole UX designer and lead user researcher, set the research and experience direction for an emerging technology, working alongside about five engineers, marketing and VP-level product leadership.
• Designed and conducted qualitative research to understand how remote participants interact with physical spaces and distributed teams.
• Translated research findings into product requirements, interaction models and strategic recommendations.
• Partnered closely with engineering, product and business leadership to balance customer needs, technical constraints and commercial objectives.
• Supported AMLOS’s launch at CES 2022 in partnership with HITRECORD, and its continued development and demonstration at CES.

Senior Design Researcher

Led research and strategic design initiatives spanning digital products, retail, customer support, insurance and new service development.

1.8 millionusers brought into the Asurion Tech Coach system by an outbound communications initiative I owned — roughly twice the team’s original year-end goal.

• Designed and facilitated multi-market co-creation research that informed the future design of uBreakiFix stores nationwide.
• Researched the interconnected needs of customers, franchise owners, front-desk employees and repair technicians to ensure new experiences worked across the entire service ecosystem.
• Helped build research capability in the design team: interviewed candidates, onboarded new hires, mentored designers and researchers, and trained designers to run and use research themselves.
• Helped grow Asurion’s Research & Strategic Insights practice, connecting research across teams and business units.
• Facilitated workshops with designers and cross-functional teams.
• Developed and introduced persona-based design principles to support more consistent customer-centered decision-making.
• Led UX work on the redesign of an internal customer complaints platform focused on improving resolution and reducing customer complaints.
• Researched and redesigned elements of Verizon’s mobile insurance claim experience.
• Presented research findings, strategic recommendations and product direction to senior stakeholders.

UX Designer & Innovation Strategist

Worked with enterprise organizations and global brands to explore new products, services and customer experiences through research, strategy and rapid experimentation.

• Planned and facilitated design sprints and innovation workshops for clients including Deloitte and Verizon.
• Conducted customer research and translated findings into product and experience strategy.
• Often owned the client’s ambiguous problem rather than a ready-made interface brief, turning broad business challenges into defined customer problems, concepts and testable hypotheses.
• Supervised and mentored the UX interns who reported to me, helped junior practitioners develop their UX skills, and sat on hiring interview panels.
• Created prototypes to evaluate emerging ideas with customers and communicate product direction to stakeholders.
• Developed digital strategy for the Georgia Tourism Board.
• Wrote production HTML, CSS and JavaScript, establishing a technical foundation that continues to inform how I work with engineering teams.