Work Experience
Product Designer
U.S. Bank • Contract
April 2022 – January 2025
Minneapolis, MN
Designed intuitive, engaging, and accessible user interfaces for the Elan Financial Services' credit card app, transforming a 1.6-star rating to an outstanding 4.8/5 stars with 123,000+ reviews by delivering a world-class application for financial services and digital banking.
Drove the design and maintenance of 37+ native and responsive web features using Figma, leveraging a custom white-label design system to deliver intuitive, scalable experiences for partner credit card systems and achieve a 94% task completion rate and 76% satisfaction rate.
Led extensive user research and synthesis, including competitive analysis and a Google Sprint, collaborating with Product Managers and UX Researchers to validate features and inform product strategy, resulting in research-backed solutions that resolved critical user pain points.
Acted as a core member of a cross-functional agile product development team, integrating accessibility-first design principles from conception through to shipping products to market, ensuring inclusive and seamless user journeys for millions of users.
UX/UI Design Mentor
Springboard • Part-time
April 2022 – May 2023
Remote
Mentored three UX/UI design students on two capstone projects, a UX industry design project, a Google Venture design sprint, their professional portfolio, interview preparation, job search, and various curriculum exercises
Senior UX/UI Designer
Xcel Energy • Full-time
2021 – 2022
Minneapolis, MN
Orchestrated the redesign of Xcel Energy's global navigation, transforming an outdated and inconsistent system into an intuitive, scalable experience that provided seamless functionality across residential, business, vendor, and partner microsites.
Drove user research and synthesis, leveraging user surveys, Google Analytics, and competitive analysis to uncover critical pain points and inform design strategy, ensuring research-backed solutions for the revamped navigation.
Contributed significantly to the Xcel Energy Design System (XEDS), creating high-fidelity mockups and prototypes that unified typography, iconography, and colors, fostering collaborative iteration and ensuring brand cohesion for world-class applications.
Championed a mobile-first design approach, elevating critical information like outage details for quick access, and refined navigation through usability testing (A/B tests, unmoderated sessions) to deliver a consistent and user-friendly experience across all platforms.
Product Designer
Thrivent • Full-time
2020 – 2021
Minneapolis, MN
Led the redesign of Thrivent’s authenticated financial services platform, transforming a disjointed experience into an intuitive, personalized digital banking solution by aligning branding and functionality with the mobile app and modern industry standards.
Initiated proactive user research and synthesis through a novel approach, leveraging internal employee accounts and Amazon Turk surveys for competitor analysis of private authenticated experiences, directly informing data-driven design decisions for world-class applications.
Operated as a key member of a cross-functional agile product development team, rapidly iterating wireframes and contributing to usability testing (A/B click tests, moderated sessions) to address critical member pain points and ensure research-backed solutions.
Applied systems thinking to develop scalable experiences and a cohesive design, fostering strong team collaboration to transform a complex financial platform, setting the foundation for future member engagement and shipping product enhancements with long-term impact.
Product Designer
Ameriprise • Contract
2019 – 2020
Minneapolis, MN
Led the UI/UX design and successful shipping to market of a world-class mobile app dashboard MVP for financial services, transforming a disjointed experience into an intuitive, personalized hub by leveraging extensive user research and synthesis (A/B, unmoderated testing, competitive analysis) and rapid prototyping within a cross-functional agile product development team, ensuring scalable experiences and seamless cross-platform alignment.
Orchestrated the comprehensive redesign of RiverSource.com, a flagship financial services B2C website, transforming an outdated and non-compliant platform into a modern, intuitive, and WCAG 2.0-compliant experience through extensive user research (competitive analysis, tool audits, user flow restructuring) and high-fidelity prototyping, establishing a foundation for increased engagement and scalable impact across the organization's digital banking products.
Spearheaded a global initiative to transform Columbia Threadneedle's digital presence, evolving a small accessibility review into the development and implementation of a unified, WCAG 2.1-compliant design system for financial services, which streamlined over 100 inconsistent colors and fonts, resolved critical accessibility issues, and drove significant efficiency gains for design and development teams.
Collaborated with a cross-functional team, including leadership, UX, product, accessibility, content, research, development, and QA specialists, demonstrating a bias towards action in shipping products to market.
Senior UX/UI Designer
Hot Dish Advertising • Contract
2019
Minneapolis, MN
Led end-to-end digital design experiences for nationally recognized, and award-winning B2B franchisor clients
Completed the launch of several results-driven, user-centric responsive websites, and numerous landing pages, social media, and digital ad campaigns in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment
Performed user experience audits, competitive analyses, and user interviews, created user personas, user journeys, and high-fidelity mockups, and developed prototypes within a collaborative, design-thinking framework
Mentored and oversaw a Graphic Designer for various digital client experiences
Projects included: responsive website designs, B2B brand marketing, landing page designs, eMarketing campaigns, and collateral design
Senior Graphic Designer
Optum • Full-time
2013 – 2018
Eden Prairie, MN
Led and mentored two Graphic Designers for B2B corporate marketing communication initiatives
Served as a creative business partner, overseeing project, time, and budget management
Drove strategy, design, coordination, and production for internal, multichannel brand marketing solutions
Provided guidance and adherence to brand guideline standards for enterprise-wide marketing communication projects in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment
Projects included: B2B brand marketing and identity, collateral and signage design, eMarketing and website intranet graphics, event branding, video graphics, digital signage, and executive presentations
Professional Development
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Lean UX and Agile
Being a UX Leader
Design Thinking
Design Tradeoffs and UX Decision Frameworks
Information Architecture
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Chegg Skills, 2018 – 2019
User Experience Design (UX)
User Interface Design (UI)
Front-end Web Development
Education
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UW-Stout
Major: Graphic Design
Menomonie, WI -
Fachhochschule
Graphic Design
Hildesheim, Germany
Volunteer
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University of Minnesota
October 2024 – June 2025
RemoteGuided a UX/UI Design student in building a successful career by diving into the essentials: mastering portfolios, personal branding, career paths, job search strategies, and interview skills
Provided hands-on feedback on projects, and equipped them with networking know-how to help them confidently enter the industry
Organizations
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UXPA-MN member
(User Experience Professionals Association)
2019-2022
Get in touch
Looking for an experienced designer who blends creativity with functionality? Let’s connect. I craft intuitive, user-friendly experiences that drive engagement and results. Reach out to discuss how I can elevate your product’s design.