Leadership case study
Building the Product Design Function
My formal team is small, but the work around it reaches across the organization. I have focused on hiring and developing designers while making cross-functional responsibilities and working practices clearer.
Team growth
Grew Product Design from one person to three, leading hiring and onboarding for both direct reports.
Designer development
Mentored one designer through promotion to Senior Product Designer.
Building a team rather than inheriting one
I began at Cartera as the sole product designer. As the product expanded, I led the hiring and onboarding of two designers and established expectations for the team’s work.
My management approach is direct and practical. I work with designers on product strategy, interaction decisions, prototyping, stakeholder communication, and craft. One of the clearest signs of that work is mentoring a designer through promotion to Senior Product Designer.
Clarifying how the work gets done
Team growth alone did not solve the coordination problems around design. Product Design, product management, engineering, design systems, marketing, and client teams each saw a different part of the product.
I led work to define roles and responsibilities, build team charters, and create shared working agreements. The purpose was not process for its own sake. It was to make ownership clearer and reduce the time teams spent negotiating the same boundaries from project to project.
Operating model
Clearer responsibilities around a shared product problem
Product Design
Product Management
Engineering
Design Systems
Client teams
Shared product direction
Team charters, role definitions, intake, working agreements, reviews, and documented practices
Changing the review process
I brought design into planning discussions earlier and increased the use of responsive, working prototypes in reviews. This made it easier to discuss actual behavior and tradeoffs rather than debate interpretations of static screens.
I have also established standard practices for AI-assisted product design, including when a working prototype is useful, how generated output should be reviewed, and where normal product and engineering controls still apply.
Leadership outside Product Design
My organizational leadership also includes serving as President of RakAbility Americas, Rakuten’s employee resource group for people with disabilities and their allies.
I lead its management team, budget, programming, and relationships with senior and global leaders. The role includes public speaking, accessibility programming across North America and EMEA, and recommendations intended to improve company practices and policies.
RakAbility is a different leadership context from managing a product-design organization. It has strengthened my ability to set direction, allocate limited resources, represent a group publicly, and influence teams I do not manage.
The result
The Product Design function now has clearer responsibilities, a stronger team, and more useful ways to collaborate with the groups around it. The work is ongoing. Building a design organization is less about declaring a model than making it understandable and useful in everyday decisions.