I find people endlessly fascinating. My relentless curiosity about human behavior—why we make the choices we do, what shapes our habits, and how we act—fuels my drive to create digital experiences that are empowering, intuitive, and genuinely useful. My goal is to help people lead happier, more meaningful lives through thoughtful design.
With a foundation in visual design, I bring a strong aesthetic sensibility and a deep understanding of design principles to my work in user experience research and design. Over time, my passion has shifted toward the qualitative and quantitative research and testing that inform experience design, enabling me to simplify complex processes into efficient, elegant workflows.
As Product Owner for UX within my software product, I now have the strategic opportunity to champion UX principles at the heart of product development. This role allows me to bridge research insights, business objectives, and design execution—ensuring that every decision moves us toward experiences that resonate deeply with our users. One of my favorite things about UX is that the learning never ends; every project offers new perspectives, challenges, and opportunities to make a real impact.
UX Research & Design Experience
Work Experience
EY – Cleveland, Ohio
AUGUST 2025 – present
Associate Director, UX Research & Design | Client Technology
- Collaborate with business stakeholders on a shared vision for the Global Tax Platform’s user experience based on product goals.
- Communicate the business context & distill complexities to lead the UX team toward progress and success.
- Manage quarterly planning, the product backlog, delivery, team staffing and on-boarding.
- Design across all trains and teams to support designers and the success of the overall platform.
- Execute user research, lead discovery and exploration workshops to help define requirements, and prioritize features based on user needs.
MAY 2021 – JULY 2025
Assistant Director, UX Research & Design | Client Technology
- Collaborate with business stakeholders on a shared vision for the Global Tax Platform’s user experience based on product goals.
- Communicate the business context & distill complexities to lead the UX team toward progress and success.
- Manage quarterly planning, the product backlog, delivery, team staffing and on-boarding.
- Design across all trains and teams to support designers and the success of the overall platform.
- Execute user research, lead discovery and exploration workshops to help define requirements, and prioritize features based on user needs.
JULY 2019 – MAY 2021
Senior UX Designer, UX Research & Design | Client Technology
- Partner with multiple product teams to create UX designs and prototypes for EY’s current and future-state Global Tax Platform (GTP).
- Lead UX designer for group of product teams focused on the execution of global tax delivery services via integrated and third-party applications.
- Plan and execute quantitative and qualitative user research to inform and validate information architecture and UX design direction for future-state.
- Implement experience design through the creation of deliverables including wireframes, high-fidelity mock-ups, prototypes, and journey maps for various GTP workflows.
- Contribute to discovery workshops to understand user needs, behaviors, and pain points.
- Contribute to the design and maintenance of the Tax Design System.
Kent State University – Kent, Ohio
DECEMBER 2017 – JULY 2019
Senior UX Designer
- Team lead and UX project manager
- Lead quantitative and qualitative user research and testing to inform UX design decisions, identify usability issues, and generate ideas for university facing applications
- Execute UX direction through the creation of deliverables including journey maps, wireframes, prototypes, and UI designs for university portal, mobile apps, and workflows
- Collaborate with stakeholders throughout the university community to establish user-centered direction for digital products
- Establish and maintain design systems and components libraries across multiple development platforms
AUGUST 2015 – DECEMBER 2017
UX Designer
- Design surveys, user research studies, conduct user interviews, and execute usability testing to create user-centered product focus for university applications
- Execute UX direction through the creation of deliverables including wireframes and prototypes for university portal and various applications
APRIL 2014 – AUGUST 2015
UX Designer
NAS Recruitment Innovations – Valley View, Ohio
- Collaborate with product owners, development and creative teams to define and implement innovative solutions for the user-facing product direction, visuals and experiences
- Front-end development and styling of software products and websites using current HTML5, CSS/LESS and JavaScript/JQuery technologies
- Execute visual design stages from concept to development
- Create wireframes, user flows and site maps to effectively communicate interaction and design ideas
- Design user research studies including the creation of moderator’s guides, user tasks, surveys and other artifacts related to designing and conducting studies
AUGUST 2012 – MARCH 2014
eCommerce UI Visual Designer
Dots, LLC – Glenwillow, Ohio
- Lead the visual design efforts of the ecommerce launch and redesign of dots.com
- Responsible for creating user interface graphics to support the organization’s goals and initiatives
- Create all graphics and content for email marketing efforts
- Utilize site analytics to drive creative concepts and site messaging
- Create meaningful interactions to engage user in site content
- Observe and contribute to usability studies
- Create wireframes, prototypes and documentation to communicate UI revisions
- Manage ongoing collaboration with ecommerce, Creative and Marketing teams to align product and promotional messaging
DECEMBER 2010 – AUGUST 2012
Web/Graphic Designer
Proforma – Independence, Ohio
- Responsible for the HTML/CSS for email marketing, mobile micro-site development, landing page creation and site content
SEPTEMBER 2009 – DECEMBER 2010
Web/Graphic Designer
PrintGen, LLC – Akron, Ohio
- Collaborated with design team on the conceptualization, development and execution of cross-media marketing campaigns
OCTOBER 2005 – SEPTEMBER 2009
eCommerce Coordinator/Graphic Designer
Proforma – Independence, Ohio
- Constructed, updated and maintained 400+ ecommerce sites and interfaces including variable data web-to-print solutions
Education
AUGUST 2015
Master of Science,
User Experience Design
Kent State University, Kent, Ohio
AUGUST 2002
Bachelor of Arts,
Visual Communications Design
Kent State University, Kent, Ohio
Methods & Tools
Design Methods
- Prototypes
- Wireframes
- Participatory Design
- Concept Maps
- User Flows
- Accessibility
Research Methods
- User Interviews
- Ethnography
- Task Analysis
- Usability Testing
- Survey Design
- Card sorting
- Heuristic Evaluation
- Competitive Analysis
- Persona Development
Tools
- Figma
- Optimal Workshop
- HTML, CSS, JS, frameworks
- Adobe Creative Suite
- Google Analytics