Why UX matters to me

When I was getting my degree in Childhood & Special Education, I read "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson in my free time and was fascinated at how complex it is to design something that is simple and easy to use.

I was teaching at York Elementary School when I realized I wanted to make a difference for teachers through technology and design.

I left teaching and earned my UX certificate at General Assembly. I got a job at an ed-tech startup called TeachersConnect — where I designed a social networking app for teachers.

I learned how powerful UX is and saw how much I improved the lives of teachers — if I could help teachers with UX, who else could I help?

Fast forward, and I'm currently helping patients get quality healthcare at CVS Health through virtual care and MinuteClinics. As a manager, I use my teaching skills to mentor designers and help them achieve their career goals.

Photo of a t-shirt my students signed for me at the end of the school year and the "Steve Jobs" book I read. I wanted to help teachers through technology and design — so I joined General Assembly.

Photo of me and Julie Situ whiteboarding at General Assembly.

Skills & Experience

Career Timeline

Sr. Experience Design Manager at CVS Health (2023-Present)

Managing the Health Services design team at a higher level by creating design roadmaps and overseeing the execution of web/app designs for CVS Virtual Care, CVS health service emails, and MinuteClinic health service pages
Coaching direct reports to improve performance and meet monthly career goals (promoted designers; helped others bounce back from poor performance ratings)
Collaborating with Product, Design, Engineering, and Agile leadership to plan design work and ensure design quality/velocity meets business and user needs (decreased time to complete features by 35%; reduced feedback loops/re-work)
Improving our design process, facilitating culture activities, and managing through organizational change (hosting retros, monthly culture events, role agreements)

Experience Design Manager at CVS Health (2021-2023)

Managed the Health Services design team in the creation of CVS Virtual Care (1,026,000 users in 2023 with a 95% conversion rate), the optimization of MinuteClinic Pre-Visit Checklist (increased conversion rate to 90%), and consolidated 130 health service email designs into 6 reusable design templates
Led hiring/onboarding processes and mentored direct reports to meet goals
Collaborated with product, engineering, marketing, legal, clinical, and branding stakeholders throughout the design process to align
Conducted research and referenced analytics to inform design decisions
Refined our design process to adapt to many mid-sprint requests

Product Design Manager at Wayfair (2020-2021)

Managed, supported, and mentored a design student through project management and professional development in a full-time student co-op program
Led vision and strategy of visual redesign and rebranding for our supplier platform by managing design and engineering teams
Supervised and advised 27 product designers who implemented our design system’s new standardized design patterns across 180 tools

Product Designer at Wayfair (2018-2019)

Evolved our design system by designing new components for product teams and updating our grid system to 4px by creating a new Sketch pattern library
Led and executed the research, strategy, education, and rollout of Abstract to maintain Wayfair’s growing enterprise design team and design system
Created an on-boarding committee and wrote 18 design education articles to help increase efficiency and improve the experience of on-boarding new hires
Researched, designed, and user tested a new media repository platform
Increased efficiency of Wayfair's 3D model QA process by redesigning tool

UX Designer at TeachersConnect (2017-2018)

Designed a social-networking app and website based on teacher feedback
Created marketing websites for TeachersConnect partners and teachers

General Assembly UX Program (2016)

Found that UX combines my two biggest strengths: understanding people's problems and strong visual design
Designed four projects in a 10-week full-time UX program

Digital Media and IT (2013-2016)

Created graphics, videos, and other art as the media consultant for students at my university
Gained an appreciation for minimalistic design
Fixed software and technical computer problems for students and staff