Nov 2024 – Oct 2025 · 11 mos · Christchurch Metropolitan Area

• Taking a brief break. Learning to be the best Dad I can.

Aug 2024 – Oct 2024 · 2 mos · New Zealand · Remote

• Supported Starboard’s CMO and CPO with growth design and product positioning, transitioning all front-facing web marketing efforts to Webflow, and optimizing lead capturing funnels.

May 2024 – Present · 2 yrs · Remote

• Helping designers, product managers and leaders from early-stage startups and established companies navigate challenges and achieve personal goals through practical, actionable mentorship.

Apr 2024 – Present · 2 yrs 1 mo · Christchurch Metropolitan Area · Remote

• Volunteer mentorship. Helping build Aotearoa New Zealand's knowledge-based economy through startup founder mentorship.

Jan 2024 – May 2024 · 4 mos · Tokyo, Japan · Remote

• Operating as a fractional Director of Design, focused on the following aspects:
• Supporting new and existing product directors, and their reporting product managers/product marketers, to develop strategic priorities.
• Mentoring 4 designers based on their individual challenges and needs. Subjects included storytelling / narrative development, user research, stakeholder management and visual design craft.

Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 · 1 yr · Tokyo, Japan · Remote

• As product director of a new business unit, reporting to the Chief of Product, I led two product teams while continuing to provide functional guidance to a team of designers.
• Moneytree for Small Business
• Led a scrappy cross-functional product team comprising designers, engineers, product marketers, and product managers.
• Mentored team members through a three-month product discovery process, which encompassed conducting customer interviews, performing market research, and creating pricing strategies.
• Guided the team in synthesizing insights and strengthening narratives to present and convince company leadership and board members.
• Oversaw the development of a tablestakes product over a three-month period, transitioning from a beta phase to a full launch with subscriptions managed through Stripe.
• Presented product strategy and financial modelling to the board of directors.
• Growth Team
• Ran a collaborative growth team consisting of product managers, designers, engineers, and enterprise marketers.
• Mapped the entire lead acquisition funnel for enterprise customers to identify institutional bottlenecks in messaging, process, and workflows.
• Employed the RICE framework to objectively prioritize improvements based on reach and impact.
• Redesigned key landing pages and introduced directional chatbots to guide leads towards answering questions as quickly as possible.
• Implemented a self-serve product funnel, providing potential customers with a limited-time test environment to try out Moneytree’s LINK API.

Nov 2021 – Jan 2023 · 1 yr 2 mos · Tokyo, Japan · Remote

• Returned to the company to lead and build a design function, comprised of remote designers working horizontally across the organization.
• Established new standards for hiring and evaluation.
• Led the recruitment for new design talent end-to-end.
• Introduced the organization's first career rubric for designers.
• Coached individuals while producing standards and process for conducting user testing.
• Guided designers through creating a brand new mobile experience for Japan's second biggest bank.
• Led new product discovery squads to validate new areas of the domestic financial market.

Jan 2021 – Oct 2021 · 9 mos · Remote

• While reporting to the COO, led a remote team of product and brand designers to make continuous and automated software testing accessible to all.

Mar 2020 – Jan 2021 · 10 mos · Remote

• First designer at the company following a reorganization and pivot in strategy. Initially reporting to the Director of Product, followed by the COO.
• Constructed and executed a new skills assessment process for design candidates.
• Hired a remote team of designers from the ground up.
• Instrumented a robust first-two-weeks onboarding processes for new hires.
• Led user research initiatives to inform company strategy and road map prioritization.
• Introduced and led strategic product changes to drive measurable growth.
• Led a redesign of the company's brand identity.
• Responsible for the end-to-end product design process: strategy, visual design, analytics etc.
• Regularly collaborated with senior staff across engineering, customer success and sales (across North America, Europe and APAC) to ensure alignment.

Jul 2019 – Oct 2019 · 3 mos

• Product and user experience design for the onboarding of a personal banking product built in partnership with 三菱UFJ銀行.

Aug 2017 – Jul 2019 · 1 yr 11 mos

• Leading product teams to create new initiatives in multiple markets to drive consumer and platform growth of the Moneytree financial eco-system.
• Product owner and design lead for key web-products for the Link financial platform.
• Created solutions to increase mobile subscription purchases by 5% and reduce churn by 2%.
• Created cross-functional processes to aid customer success, design, engineering and sales teams.
• Launched product marketing experiments and customer research initiatives to reduce churn.
• Mentored product designers and managers to help them onboard and be set up for success.
• Led a team to build, design and deploy custom products for Japanese financial institutions including: 三菱UFJニコス, 横浜銀行, 山形銀行, 常陽銀行, 京葉銀行, 足利銀行, 碧海信用金庫 and 池田泉州銀行.
• Won 2 MVP awards as voted by the company C-suite.

Nov 2016 – Aug 2017 · 9 mos

• Product design and front end development for Moneytree consumer web and mobile applications in the Japanese and Australian market.
• Launched successful initiatives on Moneytree's for iOS to increase push notification permission acceptance.
• Launched onboarding updates to support multi-regional user support.

Jul 2015 – Nov 2016 · 1 yr 4 mos · Tokyo, Japan

• As a lead designer, collaborated with partners across senior leadership and engineering to research and launch new product initiatives in-line with the company's pivot from a mobile centric retailer to a in-store payment solutions service.
• Prototyping ideas and leading proposals in order to gain direct stakeholder buy-in to proceed with new features.
• Led design and contributed development (Objective-C and Swift) for a new payment method using Bluetooth across iPhone iPad, and Android devices.
• Led product strategy for a redesign of the core Origami iOS and Android applications in order to align with company goals focusing on in-store merchants.

Aug 2014 – Jul 2015 · 11 mos · San Francisco Bay Area

• Worked with a team of 7 to design, build and ship a new mobile application from Xero focused on helping employers communicate with their employees more effectively.
• Led the mobile design for the iOS application, from the initial inception until the project was shipped.
• Developed and implemented iOS components using Objective-C and Swift.
• Helped prototype and develop brief user testing sessions in order to gain potential insights about the product.

Aug 2012 – Jul 2014 · 1 yr 11 mos · San Francisco Bay Area

• Part of the Facebook design team, owning the end-to-end design of products across Facebook Messenger, Photos and Feed. For Web, iOS and Android.
• Projects Included:
• Facebook Messenger Voice Calling for iOS and Android.
• Driving Facebook Messenger user engagement and activity.
• A redesign of Photo Uploading for the core Facebook application on iOS and Android to increase content production of photos across the platform.
• Helped grow face tagging in Photos by 10% on iOS and Android by aligning the UX with a more common user behavior.

Mar 2012 – Jun 2012 · 3 mos · Wellington, New Zealand

• Played the role of swiss army knife within Resn helping out as both a Production Designer and Front End Engineer on projects for Google, FedEx and EDF.

Feb 2012 – Jun 2012 · 4 mos · Wellington, New Zealand

• Aided in teaching a class, of near 30 students, on the subject of Design Psychology.

Nov 2011 – Feb 2012 · 3 mos · Wellington, New Zealand

• Researched user interfaces and critical design concepts as well as produced a website that detailed the process for technologies relating to Merino sheep breeding. The project was overseen and initiated by Deputy Head of School of Architecture, and Senior Lecturer, Anne Galloway.

Dec 2009 – Mar 2012 · 2 yrs 3 mos · Wellington, New Zealand

• Assisted and led various graphical, branding and web jobs around the Design and Architecture faculty of the University.

Nov 2009 – Nov 2011 · 2 yrs · Wellington, New Zealand

• A junior position creating various websites for client projects, including designing and coding themes for the Wordpress CMS.