Professional Summary

Senior Product Designer • Emergent UX/UI & Strategic Storytelling | I translate genius into usable, resonant experiences.

Senior product designer with deep experience shaping emotionally intelligent, content-forward digital experiences across web, mobile, and multimedia platforms. Known for creating “empact” — impact through empathy — bringing clarity to ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and delivering systems that solve real problems for people while meeting business goals.

Professional Experience

Senior UI/UX Designer & Strategic Storyteller

Independent Consultant for fundraising, B2B, and edtech SaaS clients | 2010–Present

• Discover and align genuine user needs with business goals: My clients across SaaS and mission-driven sectors faced complex products, unclear value propositions, and fragmented user experiences. I led end-to-end UX/UI research and design across web and mobile platforms, from discovery through strategy, interaction design, prototype testing, high-fidelity execution, QA, and deployment to production. I delivered content-forward, emotionally resonant interfaces that improved usability, coherence, and stakeholder confidence across multiple products, while solving better problems for our users.
• Translate uncertainty into actionable experience strategy: Product teams struggled with ambiguous goals, competing organizational priorities, and communication gaps between teams. I carried out and synthesized stakeholder interviews, user research, and usability testing into clear experience frameworks, annotated flows, storytelling presentations, interaction models, and design narratives. This enabled teams to make confident decisions, accelerate alignment and approval, and move forward with aligned, data-informed design direction.
• Create scalable, accessible systems to support long-term growth: Growing products lacked visual and interaction consistency across features and releases. I defined and evolved design systems, visual languages, and interaction frameworks across complex platforms for improved consistency, scalability, and efficiency for design and development teams.
• Help cross-functional teams communicate well: Everywhere I’ve worked, cross-functional teams needed tighter alignment and better communication to ship high-quality work. The task was to bridge design, product, engineering, and leadership perspectives, a challenge requiring similar skills to those that make for good UX research: deep listening, empathy, curiosity, and appreciation. I worked horizontally, partnering closely with product managers, engineers, marketers, and executives in Agile environments, producing artifacts like wireframes and interactive prototypes to bring clarity to all stakeholders from upper leadership to junior developers. This helped facilitate cohesive, high-quality outcomes that balanced user advocacy with technical and business realities.
• Clients include: Momentive Software, VenturEd Solutions, CommunityBrands, GiveSmart, InRESONANCE, SchoolYard, Serendipitus, Hear Now Inc., MagiMoji

Director of Publications & Video Storytelling

Watkinson School | 1993–Present

• Unify brand voice, storytelling, and design across print, digital, and video: The school lacked a cohesive narrative and visual identity across platforms. I co-led a long-term brand, narrative, and multimedia strategy; developed a cross-platform design system and editorial framework; and developed a recognizable brand voice and visual identity. As a result, we significantly increased engagement, enrollment interest, and fundraising outcomes.
• Tell a complex story with strategic clarity and emotional impact: The school’s message was compelling but hard to articulate. We decided to create a scalable storytelling system that would feature authentic testimonials through interviews. I directed the creative execution of a video storytelling vault, was responsible for shaping and editing content, and integrated editorial experiences across channels. The Watkinson Story Vault established a recognizable, emotionally resonant narrative system aligned with institutional goals.

Interactive Curriculum & Experience Designer

Freescaling.com | 2014–Present

• Design interactive experiences to help students learn by doing: Beginning musicians struggle to learn improvisation through traditional instruction. The task was to design a learning experience centered on “playing to learn,” translating material from content experts into an interactive online curriculum. I designed and built a 7-module online curriculum, creating both the narrative structure and the interactive technical framework. Freescaling.com now delivers an immersive, practice-based learning experience that supports experimentation, reflection, and skill development.

Website Design & Development

• Create and maintain complex, responsive, and accessible websites that clearly express mission, support evolving organizational goals, and work reliably for both users and internal teams: Mission-driven organizations often rely on complex websites to communicate purpose, engage diverse audiences, and support real-world impact—yet those sites must remain flexible, accessible, and maintainable over time. I led web design and development efforts end to end, architecting site structures and design systems while crafting headlines and body copy that translated strategy into compelling and conversational language. I designed and built responsive interfaces using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, addressing design challenges creatively while debugging technical issues with precision and care. I balanced higher-level experience strategy with close attention to detail, ensuring pixel-perfect execution, accessibility best practices, and performance across devices while communicating clearly with stakeholders and developers to align vision, constraints, and execution. The resulting sites were durable, expressive, and easy to evolve as client needs changed.
• Clients include: watkinson.org, aaconserve.org, brooksbendfarm.org, bindacolebrookart.com, aliveness.kitchen, freescaling.com, thesoftgourmet.com, many others

Game and Card Deck Design

• Design and see through to production high-fidelity card decks and games that inform, instruct, and delight
• The Pollinator Garden Planning Deck, 102-card deck to help homeowners create pollinator habitat and support pollinator migration corridors; published by Princeton Architectural Press
• Inside Voice Studio Deck, 84-card designed to support the methodology of NYC’s leading voice teacher; in production
• The Wreck Deck (thewreckdeck.com), fully funded on Kickstarter in <24 hours
• Emergent: 91-card oracle deck produced as tabletop game as well as interactive online engine; I wrote, designed, and coded emergentgame.com

Education

Yale University
B.A., English, magna cum laude
Distinction in the Major • Winner, Yale Fiction Prize

Core Skills

UX Research • UI & Interaction Design • Product Design • Brand Systems & Guidelines • Visual Frameworks • Writing • Video Production • Design Systems • Responsive Web Design • Accessibility-First Design • User Flows • Wireframes • Interactive Prototypes • Marketing Materials • Storytelling • Stakeholder Collaboration • Agile & Cross-Functional Teams

Tools & Technologies

Figma (including Component Libraries & Variants, Auto Layout Mastery, Design Systems Management) • Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign) • HTML/CSS/JavaScript • Jira • Confluence • Miro • WordPress • Final Cut Pro • Logic Pro

Exhibitions & Releases

2027 — Metabolize, A.P.E. Gallery
2026 — Upperworld, BOMDi (album release on Spotify)
2025 — The Wreck Deck, Kickstarter campaign, fully funded in <24 hours
2024 — Helices, A.P.E. Gallery