About me

I've been working in the digital space since the year 2000, starting as an online editor at Sun Media's Canoe.ca news site. My job was to copy and paste the text of the newspaper from the digital files they used for publishing the paper into HTML templates and publish them to the site.

Since those early days I have worked my way through the digital product experience landscape, holding roles as a content writer, editor, design strategist, information architect, interaction designer, UX designer, design lead, UX research manager and UX director. Recently I have been focusing on research, strategy and innovation, as I have found these areas drive my greatest interest. I have both broad and deep capabilities across the design and product management spectrum. I have taken on product management responsibilities before I knew product management was a thing. Even if I didn't hold the title directly, I can walk and talk desired outcomes, product vision, cross-functional empowered teams and product-market fit with the best of them.

I love working with new technologies and have sought out roles in emerging tech at several times during my career. In 2009, I worked at a social media startup called Syncapse, which developed a product called SocialTalk, devised at the time as a competitor to Tweetdeck, which would allow companies to monitor, measure and publish their social media posts to all of the different social media platforms of the day. Today, this is a solved problem, but back then, we felt we were on the bleeding edge of social technology. Breaking new ground was exciting.

From 2017 to 2020 I explored virtual and augmented reality and also worked on a blockchain-based content licensing platform for VR games.  What I found fascinating about the VR/AR space was problem-solving for the physical dimension of the experiences. During that same period the company launched an Innovation Lab. In my role as facilitator and design lead, I ran design sprints with external partners, developing concepts for AR-related products that we tested with consumers.

In 2021 I took a role at this same company as UX Director, helping to build a team of product designers and researchers to build a pre-school app studio. I worked with the other directors (creative, product, production) to build a studio that would go from building a single app to two additional plus a parent platform app within the year. It was essentially a startup within a larger company. As my production colleague was often fond of saying, we were building the ship while it was going out to sea. In that role, we set up a strong customer and product-focused culture, building on the best practices of product heroes like Marty Cagan and Teresa Torres.

Throughout all of the experiences that I have had there re a few themes that emerge regarding my working style.