My Leadership

I’m a design leader with 15+ years of experience in various design leadership capacities building high-performance design teams. As a design leader, I have developed my own frameworks that I connect to the traits of the great leaders that I’ve had the opportunity to learn from. This has allowed me to become a distinctive type of design leader.

In my 15+ years of experience, I’ve established, built, and led high-performing instructional design, graphic design, and multimedia design teams. The teams I lead are creative, productive, engaged, and supported. I have had employees who follow me from one organization to the next, and who want to continue to have coaching relationships when opportunity has fated us to part ways. This is in part, because of my approach to leadership.

My leadership framework focuses on a few key areas:

• Product
  • Customer Focused
  • Timeliness
  • Quality
  • Consistency
  • Innovation
• Process
  • Timeliness
  • Quality
  • Consistency
  • Creativity & Innovation
  • Communication
  • Alignment
• People
  • Strengths Based
  • Communication
  • Creativity
  • Support (emotional & hard skills)
  • Collaboration
  • Accountability
• Tools
  • Technology
  • Resources

As a professional, I have been a design leader, designer, developer, teacher, and coach. I’ve designed and created innovative and award-winning projects. My best work will never make its way into my portfolio though, because my best work, my most important work, is the teams that I lead, and the people who make up those teams.

Any organization’s best work can only come from those who do the work. Those who do that work can only be their best when they are intentionally led to bring out their best. As this happens, design becomes more than making things look beautiful and useful. Design becomes a driver to a team’s, and ultimately an organization’s, success. Purposeful investment in people and leadership frameworks fosters creativity, innovation, and dedication. This influence is then experienced across an organization as collaborative efforts such as design sprints and committees are formed and led by and participated in by individuals who represent these values.

My leadership philosophy centers on building genuine relationships by investing in people. This investment helps to bring clarity to obstacles and challenges. It brings out creativity which leads to innovation. It fosters trust and dedication. It builds strong collaborative connections across entire organizations. It creates a ripple effect, felt throughout organizations.

This leadership framework and philosophy, combined with my deep experience as a practitioner across different design fields, forms my leadership style with proven results.