Resume - IT Creative
My mission is to help people through art and technology and to mentor the next generation of designers in STEM fields
Currently, I am offering my services as a consultant in the areas of UX Strategy, Design, and expert reviews. I also offer services to help build and improve design teams.
HIGHLIGHTS
10 year’s experience in product strategy
20 year’s experience in user experience
METHODS
Design Thinking
User Experience
Customer Experience
Lean Agile
Rapid Strategy
Design Sprint
Design in Code
User Centered Design
Human Factors
Accessibility
EDUCATION
Degree / Diploma Name
Master of Fine Arts, Columbia College Chicago
1999
Degree / Diploma Name
Master of Arts, Columbia College Chicago
1999
Degree / Diploma Name
Bachelor of Arts, Scripps College
1993
EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
Founder, CEO
8co.io, 2020-present
Product & Experience Strategy, UX Director
ICF, 2016 - 2025
Lead of User & Customer Experience
CustomInk, 2013 – 2016
Lead Architect
Siteworx, 2010 – 2013
Senior User Interface Designer
AOL, 2007 – 2010
AWARDS
2023 Women of Color Magazine
Women of Color STEM DTX
Technology Rising Stars
2012 Webby Award | Healthcare American Association of Plastic Surgery
2021 MarCom | Platinum category of Digital Media Website – Government
2021 MarCom | Gold category Digital Media Website - Redesign
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
UXPA, AIGA, IXPA, IDF
Skills
Product Strategy, Customer Experience, UX Strategy, UX/UI, UX Research, Figma, Sketch, Adobe Creative Cloud, JAMStack (HTML, CSS, Liquid, Markdown), Jekyll, 11ty, Contentful, Database Design, Content Modeling
CONSULTANCY
Working with businesses typically in the private sector to create or improve their digital experiences. For new efforts, this begins with identifying their audience, creating a brand vision, and helping them to realize an experience strategy that is human centered and accessible. For existing properties, the first steps are a full experience review to understand gaps in delivery and a plan for remediation. The work to support these efforts ranges from UX reports to full scale designs. For some clients, my talents are brought in to help improve the processes their internal design teams so they can be more efficient in their interactions and delivery with project managers and developers.
DIRECTORSHIP AT ICF
As the first UX director at ICF, my role was primarily around growth, growth of talent, growth in skillsets, and growth in business. I cultivated relationships with other groups and divisions to promote UX capabilities and add staff to projects, while at the same time working in business development by actively responding to Request for Proposals. When I started my team, we had 5 UX generalist. I increased the team to over 500% and added specialties in research, UX/UI, front-end design, UX strategy, and product strategy. Nurturing and mentorship continue to be valuable in retaining talent, I accomplish this though individual design coaching, knowledge shares, and through a training conference I founded that also includes our partners in delivery and development. I also manage a team portfolio that is over 20 projects, while actively serving as a design lead for select complex projects.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM PROJECT EXPERIENCE
User Experience Lead, Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality(CBSHQ) | ICF | 2016 – Present
Over the past 8 years, I have led the product and design vision for CBSHQ web properties. This includes completely overhauling the front-end experience to make the reports more accessible to users and improve the readability of the site, improving data visualization tools, and removing redundant information to streamline the content. Through collaboration with my client to understand the needs of researchers, policy makers, and other people needing to work with government data. I utilized best practices to create usable, accessible, multi-device experiences. Proved my solutions with human centered design, including the utilization of metrics, heat mapping, and other tools in addition to user testing to experiment and iterate when developing and maintaining a website. And worked with a team of developers, business analyst, and project managers to bring these visions to life.
Product Strategist, Office of Population Affairs | ICF | 2016 - 2018
I led a complete redesign of the OPA’s Title X Locator, creating a streamlined, user-friendly experience for citizens seeking information on clinic locations and services. Working with raw data files, I developed enhanced reporting functionality for administrators and regional officers, transforming manual workflows into efficient digital processes that allowed for easier management and reporting of grantee information to government officials. I guided a remote, cross-functional team through a highly collaborative design and development process, ensuring seamless integration and effective results.
Lead of User & Customer Experience | CustomInk | 2013 - 2016
Architect Leadership at Siteworx | 2010 – 2013
As the Experience Architect at Siteworx, my role was to establish best practices and standards for the user experience and visual design teams. I removed the silos that had existed between these two departments and joined them together for collaboration on design solutions. I also brought leads from the development teams into our process to help designers understand technical constraints while solutioning and created a content strategy specialty to make sure that content would be properly structured for content management systems, and so that voice and tone could be reflected in content creation. I also mentored the beginning BA practice in running Agile processes. I played an integral part in the sales process though creating dynamic presentations in response to request for proposals and participating in orals challenges. I was directly credited for winning work for organizations such as the National Gallery of Arts and Bridgespan. I received several accolades for my work with Mandarin Oriental, Time Warner Cable, and a Webby for PlasticSurgery.org.
Lead Experience Architect, Time Warner Cable | Siteworx | 2011 - 2013
I lead 5 concurrent projects with Time Warner Cable to consolidate their web
properties into one consistent brand. This included two projects for Residential, Business Class, MyAccounts, and RoadRunner. Each of these projects, were moved from static HTML web pages to content managed pages using Adobe Experience Manager. This move required both front-end experience and database design. I led a team of visual and user experience designers, content strategist, and front-end developers through a Design Agile process to deliver assets to the TWC internal development team. I then consulted with the internal team on implementation
Senior Experience Designer | AOL Shopping | 2007 - 2010
After MapQuest, AOL Shopping was the second largest channel at AOL, bringing in millions of page views each day. I was responsible for creating new shopping experiences which encouraged shoppers into a purchase pathway for participating brands. Through research and testing with potential shoppers, studying real world experiences, and examining the data feeds from the incoming products, I envisioned measurable experiences that complete revolutionized the channel. Most significantly, were the internal team changes that I ushered, including changing our documentation to be wiki-based, modularly structured, and united both product and design requirements. This allowed developers to synthesis information more quickly and supported our Agile Development processes for collaboration.