Resume

Summary 

Executive with 15+ years designing and leading user experience for startups and growth stage companies across multiple industries, including: ecommerce + retail, fin-tech, advertising, insurance, healthcare, kids entertainment. Specializes in hiring, developing and empowering creative teams; leading product discovery and experience strategy; driving and enabling organizational effectiveness.

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EXPERIENCE

Vice President, Design 

Optoro, Inc 

April 2017 - Present, Washington D.C. Metro Area 

Optoro’s returns platform uses machine learning and predictive analytics to optimally route retail returns to its next best home - reducing financial, operational, and environmental waste at scale. I've built, developed and currently manage high performing UX and brand design teams, set and drive vision for user experience, partnered with leadership to develop the latest cutting-edge returns solutions and experiences, implemented and trained the company on the latest design thinking methodologies & design practice, led company-wide several initiatives to enable improved organizational effectiveness and user-centric product development.

Creative Director, UX

Capital One

January 2016 - March 2017 (1 year 3 months) Vienna, Virginia 

Capital One is the fastest growing commercial bank in the U.S. My role was to lead, develop and deliver an innovative end-to-end product design experience through various platforms to upmarket card customers, as well as manage relationships between cross-functional teams. I collaboratively led redesigning the upmarket customer enrollment and onboarding experience, as well as  the "Second Look" experience, which notified customers on irregular or charges to their card.

Creative Consultant (Contract)

Porter Novelli 

October 2015 - December 2015 (3 months) Washington D.C. Metro Area 

Porter Novelli is an award-winning PR communications & advertising company. I was brought in on contract to improve design quality, methods and process for their in-house design team. I was offered a full-time opportunity has head of design.

Creative Director 

CapSpecialty 

August 2014 - September 2015 (1 year 2 months) New York, NY 

CapSpecialty is a leading provider of specialty insurance for small to mid-sized businesses in the U.S. I worked with leadership teams, managing brand consolidation of 8 companies into a single brand. Drove development and implementation of design strategy with various stakeholders including facilitating process change across new organization.

Multidisciplinary Designer 

Professional Risk Management Services, Inc. 

August 2013 - July 2014 (1 year) Washington D.C. Metro Area 

Professional Risk Management Services, Inc. (PRMS) is a premium specialty medical malpractice liability management service in the US. I was responsible for all branding, product design development and marketing campaign design for the company. I developed the first seamless digital application & purchasing experience for psychiatric caregivers in the U.S. Promoted to Creative Director at parent company, CapSpecialty. 

Freelance 

Freelance Creative Director & Entrepreneur 

October 2010 - July 2013 (2 years 10 months) Cape Town & Washington, DC 

Co-Founder & Board Member 

Strika Entertainment 

January 2001 - August 2010 (9 years 8 months) Cape Town Area, South Africa 

Creator of the internationally acclaimed entertainment franchise, Supa Strikas; co-founder, co-owner and Creative Director of Strika Entertainment. Founded, built and enabled a successful exit of Africa’s largest serialized kids entertainment to Naspers (Tencents largest shareholder). Some of my achievements during this time: 

Developed and co-produced multiple seasons of a popular animation series (22min x 13 episodes per season) in over 160 countries, including Nickelodeon, Disney XD, Orange, Star TV 

Created and developed of the world’s most widely distributed comic book (over 300 million copies published)

Developed the world’s first integrated branding model for serialized commercial youth entertainment brands 

Enabled access to informal guided literacy tools to nearly 100 million people in emerging countries

EDUCATION

U.S. 4 year equivalency Bachelors degree with 4.0 GPA (E.C.E evaluation)

Red & Yellow Creative School of Business: Art Direction and Design (1999 - 2001) 

Red & Yellow Creative School of Business: Digital Marketing (2019-2021)

Continued Education:

General Assembly: User Experience Design (2015)

General Assembly: Front End Development - HTML, CSS and Web Design  (2015) 

IDEO: Leading for Creativity, (2017)