After decades of full-time work in a career spanning UX research, design, product planning, market research, and program management, I’ve transitioned to a more flexible and passion-driven stage of my career/life. But ending full-time employment doesn’t mean the end to working with and helping others.

I’m now available to help companies of any size with specific UX Design and Research needs or whose leadership could use more UX input into their strategic planning.

My life+work passions include collaborating in solving problems, especially when working with others to do so. The process starts with identifying the right problems to solve and then identifying actionable plans to address them. And a key outcome from working on problems together is to turn colleagues into friends, and continuously learning from others.

I enjoy investing my own time in helping people in the UX industry (or those trying to break into it). That can include one-off or ongoing mentorship conversations, or – once I understand your experience, talents, and passions – acting as a reference or advocate.

A brief overview of my tech career

My full-time tech career has spanned from Washington D.C. to Silicon Valley, then up to the greater Seattle area in the other Washington, and finally into a fully remote experience working at Amplinate.

In Silicon Valley I got my start working at a consulting company (a prior incarnation of Sykes Enterprises), eventually freelanced on my own, and then joined a startup (which eventually failed).

At Microsoft I was part of various incarnations of Office, Office 365, and Microsoft 365. This included working across client, web, and mobile software and services. I took on various roles in product research as an individual contributor and as a team leader. I also worked as a Program Manager in Excel, a Product Planner for Microsoft Office, a Market Researcher on technical products/audiences, and led a number of cross-company initiatives.

Always learning throughout my career, it was at Microsoft that I was especially deeply schooled in all things UX and in developing and shipping products. A few projects of note in my time there:

  • Running the Office research team when we developed and shipped ribbon UI, and managing a combined research and design team for our first post-ribbon release of Office

  • Tracking commercial and consumer audiences’ perceptions of and satisfaction with Office versus Google, while also working on the core team implementing a common net promoter score (NPS) framework that was adopted company-wide

  • Researching usage of and satisfaction with Microsoft product development tools versus competitor offerings

  • Working on the Customer-Driven initiative to bring “customer obsession” to life for 20,000+ employees across Windows, Office, Surface, and other product teams

  • Building a Customer-Driven team at Microsoft’s India Development Centre, and leading the efforts there to create customer connections, customize workshops and provide other offerings

  • Collaborating with Program Management, Design, Data Science, and Marketing (and with wonderful Research colleagues) to reimagine Microsoft 365 offerings for very small business customers

  • Helping to define how to make product research at Microsoft more inclusive

Jumping from Microsoft to Amplinate and taking on the role of Vice President of Research & Design once again immersed in a startup environment and allowed me to play many different roles and learn new skills, from heading up our recruiting to helping to drive our business development. And all the while continuing to oversee our research and design projects. In this role I learned much more about international and cross-cultural research.

In my next career stage, I’m ready to put all of the above experiences and learnings to work!

Originally from the Midwest United States, I love to travel, read eclectically, follow Formula 1 racing, hang with my friends and family, coddle our COVID puppy, and riding on twisty roads by motorcycle.