I’m obsessed with solving the right problem.

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Hi! I am a NYC-based user experience professional with 15+ years of experience. Making the world a better place through technology, storytelling and impactful experiences is where my passion lies and people are at the center of it all.

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President Barack Obama joins United Stages Digital Service (USDS) staff for a group photo on the Navy Steps of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building of the White House, Jan. 12, 2017. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

My experience includes being the CEO and Founder of ElleSee Futures, a design and research consultancy focused on helping media and not-for-profit companies through digital transformations, focusing on human-centered design.

The human-centered design toolkit can be applied to all aspects of life, and my new role has been the perfect opportunity to do just that. In June, I joined Valley Bank, a 90-year-old bank, to build a research and service design team from the ground up.

Previously, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work as a senior researcher at WeWork’s NYC headquarters during their rapid growth phase. Prior to WeWork, I completed a tour of service with the United States Digital Service, a startup at The White House that uses design and technology to deliver better services to the American people.

My career was influenced and shaped by my early experiences serving as a liaison between reporters, editors, designers, and producers at The Washington Post. For breaking news, as well as enterprise and investigative reporting, I worked closely with every department, managing storytelling across all platforms. What I found was missing in these conversations was the reader’s voice.

My expertise includes:

  • Informing experience design decisions by becoming an expert on the situation in which a user will engage with products;
  • Informing experience design decisions by becoming an expert on the expectations of the user;
  • Informing user experience decisions by becoming an expert on what makes a product useful, desirable, valuable, accessible, credible, findable and usable;
  • Determining learnability of new features and the strategy for introducing them.

Helping product owners move from making assumptions about users to making informed decisions about usability and features users want is my strength. Experience design is not a one and done process. We should be constantly learning about how users are engaging with our products, responding to their behaviors and evolving.

How can we do this?

Business, design, content and development teams must collaborate to do:

  • Ongoing research, learning how new technologies are impacting how we live;
  • Ongoing usability studies on product suite;
  • Reports on latest technology and usability trends;
  • Strategic, pathfinding research that surfaces unmet user needs and inspires creative execution.

We must be proactive about how we can improve our products to take advantage of new behaviors and technologies.

Speaking Engagements

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