I’m enthusiastic about senior roles in product, user research, strategic design and operations — and working with good folk. Keen to bring my 20 years of experience to purpose-led projects that do right by people. 

I’ve been the Design Exec accountable for products with millions of users globally, the design and research lead agency side winning new programmes of business worth $250K, and on core teams for products with $1B revenues. I bring experience in financial services technology, education, retail, and government, to name a few.

I’ve also made every mistake in the book, so my approach is pragmatic, positive and productive. I know first-hand what building patient partnerships with senior leaders can achieve — and I’ve learned from some fantastic colleagues and clients over the years.

Teams are my thing. I’ve built and led inclusive, engaged, influential, commercially minded design and research teams of up to 30, delivering beautiful results. I make teams hum.

I can live and work in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, across the EU, and the UK, dividing my time between working from rural New Zealand, the UK or the Czech Republic.

For a flavour of who I’ve worked with, where, and for what, see below. I’m happy to chat through my work samples, so please get in touch. 

 

My Experience

  • Oct’23 — date

    Providing services through my independent consultancy: Fractional Product and Design leadership, alongside freelance Design Research services to agency and in-house teams and 1-1 coaching to emerging leaders.

    Currently, I’m having a lot of fun providing consulting product and design skills to the team at RUSH.

  • Principal, Design Operations (Remote)

    2022 - 2023, Aotearoa New Zealand

    Fixed-term role supporting SVP leaders of the design team of 200+ across the US, CA, NZ, AU and UK.

    VP / GM Design (Remote)

    2020 - 2022, Aotearoa New Zealand

    Responsible for a team of 30, in org of 180

    Design executive accountable for Xero Payroll, Xero Me and all apps and services across the Connected Workplaces Division. Sitting on the leadership team with the SVP / EGM Product.

    About Xero — Enterprise, ~5000 employees, xero.com

  • 2017 - 2020, Aotearoa New Zealand

    Responsible for a team of 8.

    Leading a team of talented, award-winning designers and director-level practitioners across all aspects of Design practice and UX excellence.

    C-suite client engagement and decision support, helping the leadership teams of some of NZ’s largest, most complex organisations move from insight to action. We delivered new insights on their customers and designed approaches to better service those customers — and in the process, to win new ones.

    Won and retained work programmes worth $250K+ across commercial and public sector clients. These included Tourism NZ, TVNZ, every leading NZ Bank, and many government ministries, including Business and Justice.

    About DNA Design — Agency, 50 employees, dna.co.nz

  • 2016 - 2017, London, UK

    Hands-on design research and product proposition development for global clients, including user testing with participants in China, Portugal and Colombia for Pearson Education; leading product research and design for an NGO working in disaster resilience; and as design research lead for GAP.

    About Reason — Agency, <50 employees, reason.co

  • 2013 - 2016, London, UK

    Responsible for team of 20 including freelancers.

    Led and scaled the UX and UI Design function at Webby award-winning print-on-demand scale-up business — an e-commerce rocket with a global customer base of small to medium businesses and freelancers. Led manager and individual contributor Researchers and Designers working in and across product teams, supporting customer journeys across retail, IoT, SaaS, and ‘prosumer’ apps.

    About MOO — Enterprise, 500 employees, moo.com

  • 2010 - 2011, London UK

    Establishing a European base for a high-growth US SaaS start-up in the ad tech space, which went on to be a market leader.

  • 2004 - 2008, Dublin, London, NYC, SF

    UX / Product role, representing customers in the design process for AdWords, accounting for 98% of Google’s revenues. Prior, I managed Google’s commercial relationship with a portfolio of ad agencies, driving US$60M+ in annual revenues.

  • University College London, 2012.

    Theory and practice, including cognitive psychology, applied ergonomics, evaluation methods and design practice.

    Thesis in analysing body movement patterns produced during laughter, intended to support research into making avatars easier to interact with in future. Know my way around a motion capture machine too, as a result.

    Finalist for CHI 2012 Student Design Entry.

    Several publications on laughter generation, recording and coding.

  • University of Limerick, 2003

    Spanish and French, with modules on language, culture, society as well as localisation, HCI and computer programming languages that now feel very dated.

 

Industries

Financial services SaaS, content streaming and TV, broadcast news production, premium e-commerce, energy utilities, national and local government, sustainable business, tourism, talent marketplaces,  professional services, consumer education, B2B learning and development, disaster preparedness, primary industries, NGOs, talent acquisition tech

 

Countries

Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, the USA, Canada, Ireland, Portugal, most of the EU, China, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Colombia and the UK

 

I’ve worked with

In Aotearoa New Zealand /

RUSH, DNA Design, Xero, Fisher and Paykel, ASB, BNZ, TVNZ, Freeview, Auckland Council, Ara Poutama Aotearoa | New Zealand Department of Corrections, Hīkina Whakatutuki | Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment New Zealand, Mercury Energy, Tourism New Zealand, Wellington Regional Development Agency

In Europe, the US and the UK /

Google, GAP Inc, Pearson Education Ltd (Wall Street English), moo.com, Disaster Emergency Preparedness and Prevention (DEPP) (NGO)