PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
User Experience Professional who offers 20+ years of leading teams and solving complex UX problems, creating beautiful and functional digital products, and designing systems that move the world.

CAREER ACCOMPLISHMENTS

  • In 2023 collaboratively worked at Zoro Tools with stakeholders and design system team colleagues to design and develop 5 foundations, 10 components, and a documentation site. These set a common design language, consistency of patterns, and technical parity to prepare for a Pilot and MVP launch to the larger organization in Q4 of 2024.
    • Will equip 30+ front-end engineers, 9 UX designers, and a handful of product owners.
  • In 2022 managed a team at Sunbelt Rentals of 10 UX agency partners and 2 in-house UX that participated in various discovery sessions, wireframing, and prototyping to effectively determine how to replace legacy systems and match the internal persona workflows to ensure customers could rent equipment on time and at affordable pricing on various form factors.
  • Collaborated with the UX team at IAA  on a design system which included leading phase 2.0 visual design and interaction design methods and advocacy for organization-wide adoption and integration into internal digital products.

EXPERIENCE

Experience Design Lead – Growth/ Design Ops | October 2024 – Present
Design System Lead | April 2022 – October 2024

Zoro Tools, North Charleston, SC


XD Lead with a focus on all aspects of growth for Zoro’s online experience. Partner with Marketing, Brand, Creative Services, XD team, engineers, CX, and other business stakeholders to strategically guide user experiences with an emphasis on holistic design and innovation.

  • Work with internal partners to establish UX patterns and best practices for solutions related to CMS, builder.io. enhancements.
  • Currently working on a large UX discovery and design project to refresh the Global Header and Navigation.
    • This included UX research, readouts, and facilitating an initial Lightning Design Workshop over three days with 12 participants that comprised of product leaders, UXR, analytics, and engineering.

Design Systems Lead with a focus on systems design and strategy with Zoro. Partner with the XD team, engineers, and CX to provide efficiency in the creation of user interfaces by empowering partners with patterns, shared vocabulary, and tools to solve customer problems.

  • Managed and coached a dedicated senior XD and guided all visual design, interactions, and design documentation for systems areas related to design tokenization, foundations, patterns, and components.
  • Lead efforts to build working relationships, collaboration processes, education, and advocacy for systems thinking with XD and Creative Services internal partners.
  • Interviewed candidates to build the initial design systems team.
  • Planned initial V1.5 up to 2.0 launch roadmap and implemented initial sprint setup in Jira prior to the design systems team formation.
  • Led ceremonies for active sprints prior to having a dedicated PM.
  • Developed a prioritization model prior to design system team formation.
  • Led effort in the initial creation of governance processes for the XD team to ensure the designs and digital products are ADA compliant, that teams are solving the right problems using consistent patterns, and encouraged creative design thinking by using the resources developed by the Design Systems team.

Principal XD | January 2021 – April 2022

Sunbelt Rentals, North Charleston, SC

Lead UX focused within the operations vertical of Sunbelt. Partnered with internal business stakeholders to ensure the strategy and experience of internal applications met KPIs and IT leadership goals and effectively matched the internal persona workflows to ensure customers could rent equipment on time and at affordable pricing.

  • Managed a team of 10 UX agency partners and 2 in-house UX that participated in various discovery sessions, wireframing, and prototyping to establish the direction to use Salesforce as a primary platform for both sales and point of sale.
  • Led effort to develop rapid concepts for Frontline that were used in field research to establish the need for sales and point of sale to be performed in the yard at brick-and-mortar locations as an alternative to the company’s primary AS400 technology.
  • Participated in UX research to determine the suitability of Blue Yonder as a TMS platform to meet goals for Sunbelt 3.0 vision.
  • Participated in and facilitated workshops centered on Frontline activities to help the business, operations, and IT teams establish experience flows, requirements, and a path forward to meet goals for Sunbelt 3.0 vision.

Lead Engineer, UX | August 2018 – January 2021 | FTE

XPO Logistics, Inc., Chicago, IL  and North Charleston, SC

Lead UX Designer within the North American Transport business unit. Focused on UX design for internal products. Partnered with groups of distributed team members and leadership in UX research, design sprints, leading UX workshops, and consulting to design and enhance enterprise applications to broker freight and move commodities around the world.

  • Managed and coached 1-4 offshore agency UX Designers and collaborated with 2 onshore UX researchers on various company initiatives.
  • Conducted project discoveries and design validation, create UX vision, guided offshore designers, reviewed wireframes and prototypes, interviewed and onboarded designers, and educated and advocated for UX best practices across North American Transportation business unit.
  • Designed reusable and scalable UX/UI patterns, lean UI wireframes, high-fidelity mockups, and interactive prototypes using visual design and interaction design principles.
  • Spearheaded improvement of Agile workflow processes between UX and aligned Scrum teams in the NAT business unit.
  • Partnered and consulted with Product teams and Development Scrum teams regarding product design and front-end UX practices and advocated for UX/UI/Interaction best practices.


UX Designer | June 2017 – August 2018 | FTE                                                                        
UX Designer/ Consultant Onsite – Optomi, LLC | November 2016 – June 2017

Insurance Auto Auctions, Westchester, IL

Led product owners through user-centered design processes to solve problem spaces for enterprise product development. Guided onshore and offshore dev teams to implement UX approved front-end layouts, pattern library styles, and components into internal and external applications. Performed lean research and designs to meet IAA vision and business goals.

  • Designed new UI using visual design and interaction design for new enhancements to internal web-based applications used in title procurement, document assistance, loan payoff, communication customizations, and native mobile apps.
  • Strategized, co-created, and scaled UX/UI Design System with UX team members to improve user experience across the IAA collection of applications.

 

Front-End Developer | August 2014 – November 2016 | FTE
Graphic Web Designer and Developer/ Consultant Onsite | March 2013 – August 2014
Grainger Industrial Supply, Lake Forest and Chicago, IL

Led user experience design and consulting for national account contract enablement including flowcharts, wireframes, and custom front-end coding.

  • Worked with cross-functional teams to devise scalable implementation plans.
  • Led front-end web development for the marketing team’s digital tactics for emerging Customer Program.
  • Collaborated with internal partners to support the development of custom HTML/CSS content on Hybris e-commerce CMS and in Oracle Endeca Workbench.
  • Led implementation of mobile-friendly responsive designs for online web pages, improving user experience.

 

Freelance, Chicago, IL and North Charleston, SC | April 2006 – December 2021, 2023, 2024
Multi-industry Consultant, UX/UI Design, Visual Design, and Branding

Strategized with clients across various marketplaces to optimize user experiences and user interfaces both offline and online, managing design and development implementation of true end-to-end experiences.

  • Strategized with company owners and key stakeholders on product launches, social media campaigns, end-to-end online experiences, SEO, direct mail, branding, advertising, websites (ecommerce, informational, MLS listing, and more), and email marketing.
  • Conducted research to educate clients on user needs.
  • Led and provided creative direction, guidance to third-party vendors, development teams, and contracted designers, and created visual designs and interaction design.

 

Web Designer |  December 2003 – May 2009
Carney & Co. Advertising and Marketing Firm, Rocky Mount, NC

Managed print and web/ interactive projects working closely with clients, internal staff, and vendors to conceptualize and create B2B branding solutions.

  • Designed set up/ development to link printed media to a MySQL database alleviating potential problems with information corruption and reducing the time needed to revise connected media formats for premier clients. Designed and developed CMS, Flash, and HTML website solutions.
  • Provided quality assurance for produced web pages and email marketing.
  • Managed and maintained B2B and consumer e-commerce sites.
  • Set up branded HTML emails and back-end MySQL databases.

 

METHODS AND SKILLS

UX Methods

Tokenization, Interaction Design, Visual Design, Design Sprints, Design Thinking, Sketches, Wireframing, Whiteboarding, Prototyping, UX Research (Personas, Ethnographic Field Studies, Customer Journey Maps, Card Sorting, Usability Studies)

Design and Planning Tools Used

Figma, Token Studio, Sketch, InVision, Miro, Adobe CC Suite, Jira, Confluence, Asana

Development Tools and Skills Used

HTML, CSS, jQuery and JavaScript

SEO Tools – Google Analytics, Hotjar

MailChimp

CMS Solutions – WordPress, Woocommerce, Hybris