Career Path

2011 - 2023

UX & Content Design, IA, & DesignOps Leadership
@ Fidelity Investments

Director, UX Design Strategy Consulting, Enterprise Learning

In the COE, I partnered with various learning experience (LX) organizations across the firm to learn how to best implement and measure learning, help them pilot new learning and career development tools, and teach them what I knew about content and UX best practices as they created style guides and standards. As word spread that there was this LX/UX chimera who could nerd out on flipped classrooms, ADDIE, and “Understanding by Design” as easily as on the UX honeycomb, visual and editorial hierarchy, and “Don’t Make Me Think,” I was soon asked to help translate the Helios Enterprise Design Strategy (created while in the UXD COE) into the Enterprise Learning Design Strategy. I became an internal consultant who was UXifying learning at the firm while continuing to manage people operations, knowledge management, talent development, onboarding, culture building, career pathing, and other such DesignOps programs for the UXD org that I had grown to know and love for the past decade. Sadly, after 12.66 years, my journey at Fidelity ended here, but now I have the chance to take the vast amount of learnings about Content, UX, L&D, DesignOps, Fintech, and myself and put it all to good use where I am valued and where that INFJ drive to make the world a better place gets plenty of fuel to burn bright.

Director, Program Management (DesignOps), UXD COE

I supported a few agile product teams as a Content and UX Designer for a short time, even got my CSPO certification (Certified Scrum Product Owner), and then somehow managed to talk myself into a position within the fairly new UXD Center of Excellence. I had just completed my Graduate Certificate in Learning Design & Technology at Harvard, and I think I was so excited about learning and development and culture and all of the great ways I thought we could make the UXD organization better that I think my future boss hired me mostly to get me to shut up (which didn’t really work… I never run out of ideas or excitement about learning or teaching or improving things). My time spent in the COE was amazing as I worked collaboratively with brilliant people to solve “wicked problems” so that our products were better while slowly weeding the dysfunction out of the organization and building a culture of psychological safety, experimentation, and inclusion. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had entered the realm of DesignOps Program Management, which allowed my INFJ to shine… explained perfectly by 16 Personalities, “Idealistic and principled, people with the INFJ personality type (Advocates) aren’t content to coast through life – they want to stand up and make a difference. For these compassionate personalities, success doesn’t come from money or status but from seeking fulfillment, helping others, and being a force for good in the world. INFJ personalities might come across as somewhat reserved, but they are fueled by a profound internal passion. Stimulated by deep, reflective thought and an enormous amount of empathy, they dedicate themselves to the pursuit of purpose.” Yes indeedy.

Principal Creative Lead, Content Strategy

More big changes… Content had just been split from Design (as had User Research), and we had yet another new CMS (Tridion). However, for the first time, we were using a CMS designed for the web, which was a huge step up. We set to learning as we built… how CMSs are structured, how components are made and used, what a taxonomy is and how to build and use one, and how to “create once, use everywhere.” The perfectionism needed some adjusting as well. I had just finished redlining spec docs to make everything pixel-perfect (no orphans or widows, no sir!) and then had to learn how to deal with the imperfections that come with responsive design pulling from a CMS. Once I adjusted, I then spent the next several years helping others cope with the trade-off of efficiency and cohesion over pixel-perfection (yes, sadly, we sometimes created widows and orphans). Then came THE AGILE TRANSFORMATION… along with much learning, shifting, and angst.

Sr. UX Designer & Content Strategist, UX Design

After just over a year, I was hired full-time and promoted to Senior Unicorn. I worked many, many overtime hours over a 9-month period as Design Lead, IA, Content Strategist, UI Designer, and Project Manager as we completely reworked all 23 online account opening processes to make them more usable (e.g., instead of asking customers for their address and things again, we would show what we knew and ask for confirmation), to adhere to the new design style guide (i.e., flat, lots of white space, simpler graphics, more natural photos, larger type, single font), and to have error messaging that was written in plain, helpful English as much as possible (which wasn’t always possible). The project was a huge success, and I am still proud of it, but if I never have to redline the spec on several hundred screens to hand off to offshore developers in full waterfall fashion, it’ll be too soon.

UX Designer, IA, & Content Strategist, UX Design

This was the first time I worked as a contractor and worked somewhere where I wasn’t THE creative person (writer, designer, wearer of many hats, unicorn, if I may be so bold). I immediately learned a ton as I was thrown into the slightly disfunctional, but cutting-edge world of UX at Fidelity. On Day 2, I was the Design Lead for the Annuities site section redesign. I had no clue what an annuity was, but after many questions and patient product partners, I helped re-IA, re-write, and re-design their site section… just before it had to be re-designed again to be migrated into a new CMS… c’est la vie.

2006 - 2021

Design, Content, Teaching, & Leadership

Guest Lecturer @ MIT Sloan

Ok, name-dropping potential of MIT aside, I am beyond grateful to have been a part of this project. I joined a group of fellow VTS enthusiasts, along with my VTS mentors, to be part of a creativity, communication, and leadership program for high-potential engineers at a global Fortune 500 computer hardware and software company (NDA prevents me from naming the company). I coached dozens of engineers, some of whom spoke very little English, many of whom had trepidations about this thing that felt was very artsy-touchy-feely, but who ended up sharing deep, insightful learnings that made me realize I always want to have VTS in my life. Even students who I thought were not getting this at all or who seemed the most critical shared reflections about how they now saw the world in a different way and were inspired to be better leaders and better humans. Truly touching, highly rewarding stuff [insert chef’s kiss].

Founder, Chef, & Brand Designer @ Kooliban

This seems a bit out of the blue, and it sort of was, but it was amazing. My husband returned from a trip home to Morocco with raw and roasted argan oil, and peanuts and almonds that his mother had roasted for him as snacks for the flight. We had a funny moment of cultural learning where I was shocked to know that people ate argan oil, and he was shocked to know that people put argan oil on their skin and hair. Roasted argan oil tastes AMAZING. Like, eat it with a spoon, mix it with the tiniest bit of vinegar for know-your-socks-off salad dressing kind of amazing. I don’t know what possessed him, but he put some peanuts and argan oil in the blender to create peanut butter. And it was so good that we immediately decided, there, on the spot, to start making peanut butter. We researched our competition and found out that a lot of peanut butter has nasty ingredients (for your body and for the environment) and we started bringing samples to work to perfect our recipe. (I still get asked if I have any bottles stashed away). We found a food incubator in Warren, RI (shout out to Hope & Main), sourced organic, non-GMO peanuts from North Carolina, and began the arduous task of getting approval to import argan oil from Morocco and to make, package, and sell our peanut butter in Rhode Island. We named the company Kooliban, which is an expression in Morocco that roughly translates to “you are what you eat” mixed with “health and beauty from the inside out.” If you think argan oil is great for your hair, you should try eating it. It has amazing plant-based Omega-3 fatty acids that have been proven highly effective at reducing inflammation (the root cause of many, many diseases). I created a brand strategy around health, taste, sustainability, and ethical sourcing (as our argan oil came from a coop of Berber women in Morocco who were able to support their families with their product) and then learned all about package and label design (including the intricate rules of food labeling and health claims). When my son was only 17 days old, we manned a table at an industry trade show where I handed out samples of Kooliban peanut butter to chefs, food distribution reps, and buyers from grocery stores and local markets. I had an award-winning food label designer praise my work (happy dance), a chef at a 5-star restaurant vow only to use our peanut butter from then on (more happy dancing), and we got jars on the shelves of several local boutique markets and the large-for-Rhode-Island Dave’s Supermarket chain. The realities of keeping bugs out of a literal ton of peanuts, grinding and packaging peanut butter ourselves with full-time jobs and a newborn, and the cost of going from Hope & Main to a wholesale packager ultimately led to shutting Kooliban down. But, I wouldn’t trade it all for anything (except maybe some more sleep… if you’ve ever had a newborn, you understand).

Contributing Editor & Author @ UX Booth

I had just been promoted to Sr. Designer at Fidelity and attended a conference where I realized that I knew most of what everyone there was talking about. I decided that maybe I could write articles and speak at conferences. I asked a mentor for advice since I felt a bit like an imposter - I hadn’t “invented” anything after all and wasn’t doing anything earth-shattering. His advice is advice that I still tell myself and others: 1) You have something to say and wisdom to share, no matter what level you are at. 2) What you may think is no big deal might be a brand-new game-changer for someone else. 3) Conferences and publications need content, so unless you’re going after the big guns (e.g., A List Apart, UX Planet, Neilsen Norman Group), you will likely find someone who wants your content, and then you can work up to the big guns. I took his advice and approached a fellow content strategist who I knew was an editor at UX Booth. To my surprise, she not only wanted me to write articles but also asked me to be a contributing editor. I absolutely loved both. I got to go deep and nerdy into UX and do fascinating research while helping others get their voice and wisdom out into the world. Life and work got busy, and I had to let it go, but it’s funny how things work out. I’m right now, as I’m typing this, working with UX Booth to reboot their weekly email newsletter.

Web Content Manager @ HSB

This job was interesting from the beginning. It was in the North End of Boston, so it was my first foray into the “fun” that is commuting into Boston, but it meant being surrounded by amazing Italian food and pastries and being in an office right on the water, so it evened out. I managed a team of 6 bilingual (Arabic/English) writers in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and 1 writer in Boston. The company aimed to bring a physical store and e-commerce site like Best Buy to Saudi Arabia, which, at the time, was about 10-15 years behind the US in all things web. In the Boston office with me were buyers and category managers who were sourcing products from the US and Europe and logistics experts who were then getting them sent to Saudi Arabia. I learned a lot about retail and e-commerce and how to navigate some interesting cultural differences. What types of cultural differences, you ask? Well… 1) every other week during our weekly manager meeting, we would have the same argument where the owner would want to hold off paying everyone until the next paycheck, and we’d inform him that that doesn’t fly in the US, 2) my boss was constantly shielding me from angry complaints from some of the men who didn’t like “that this woman thinks she can ask questions and offer opinions when she has not been given permission to do so,” 3) I learned a peculiar thing about estimating time that, it turns out, drove all of us nuts. When we would ask the people in Saudi Arabia when they would have some task done, they would always say “tomorrow,” even when we knew it was impossible for it to be done by tomorrow. I would reiterate that it didn’t need to be done tomorrow and that I just need an estimate of when it will actually be done to set expectations for my boss. But still, it was always “tomorrow.” When tomorrow would come, and I would ask if that task was done, the immediate answer was, “No, but it will be done tomorrow”<deep breaths>, 4) my Visa application to go to Jeddah and meet my team was denied 4 times (and then we gave up) because I was a “young, single female.” But, it wasn’t all bad. I also learned about the giving, generous, hard-working, kind nature of my Saudi coworkers and we eventually worked out all of the awkwardness by being open and talking things out. These experiences helped me realize that navigating cultural differences can be frustrating, but is also a fascinating and extremely rewarding thing to do.

Senior Editor and SEO Specialist @ Globenewswire, NASDAQ OMX

Editing press releases is a rough gig; the average “life span” is 3 years. I made it more than 4. Being yelled at daily by customers was just a normal part of it. As were mad-dash sprints to the bathroom or to get your lunch from the fridge to scarf down while editing away. Customers would send in their press release, where they wanted it sent, if they wanted SEO, and when they wanted it to go live, and a senior editor on the desk (usually me) would call to verify everything. This was particularly painful during the dreaded “Earnings Seasons” (when we were not allowed to take a vacation and were expected to be on call during weekends). Our process was ridiculously manual - anything that was in a table had to be translated into ASCII code before being sent out on the wire. An earnings press release for an average publicly traded company took anywhere from 4 to 6 hours to process and push live. Our customer would insist that a release had to go live in 30 minutes because there was a shareholder meeting already scheduled. We’d reiterate that it was impossible, and the yelling would begin. I had, on more than one occasion, the phone handed to the CEO, who then began hysterically and repeatedly yelling at me, “But I’m the CEO!” And, through all of this, you had to make sure you didn’t introduce any mistakes and you had to catch any that they had put in - our accuracy ratings were very closely monitored - nothing below 99.7% would do. So, one of the most stressful jobs ever. But, it made me tough, and it made me lose any fear of talking to executives of all levels, even CEOs.

Childhood - 2005

Roles that have fallen off my resume, but helped shape me into who I am

In-Home SAT Tutor: English Reading & Writing

I worked with some kids who thought they were doomed on this portion of the test, but after a few weeks, they felt like they had a handle on it. They all passed with high scores and went on to get into college.

Marketing Copywriter & Graphic Designer

I didn't know it then, but having to fit “all the things” into a trifold brochure set me up nicely for trying to fit everything “above the fold” and that creating graphics for and editing proposals in “war rooms” would start a lifelong love of papering walls with sticky notes.

Technical Intern w/ DOE Security Clearance at Sandia National Laboratories

I was a “webmaster” who designed, wrote, coded, optimized, and analyzed sites and designed and wrote tradeshow booth posters, brochures, and program fact sheets for various DOE and USAID programs. I also edited very long, very technical nuclear energy proposals. I learned some truly fascinating things about science, technology, our country, and people in other countries who were getting aid from the programs I supported.

Botanical Research Intern, NASA Mars Exploration Program Project, at UNM

I was the first freshman ever hired as an intern in the Biology department. I worked on a fascinating project where we were trying to create a medium that would allow pollen to germinate in space without needing a female flower. I loved parts of the project (especially working in the greenhouse to take care of our wild radish test subjects), but after a few months of neck and back pain and mind-numbing boredom, I realized that sitting in a closet counting tiny things under a microscope daily was not for me. I then decided to love science from a little further away.

Stable Hand at Turkey Track Stables on Route 66, Tijeras, NM

One day, I saw a group of “tough” cowboys roping a terrified 17.1-hand thoroughbred and trying to pin him down to the ground. If they got near him, he’d kick and bite (who wouldn’t?). I learned they planned to sell him to the meat market for $500 because he was “crazy.” I struck a deal with the stable owner to work off the $500 with extra stall mucking and horse washing duties. His name was Albie (short for Albie-gosh-darn), and he was a giant, beautiful dark bay with a white star. After a couple of weeks of sweet talk, gentle nose and neck rubs, carrots, apples, and much patience, he let me put on a bridle, brush him, and bathe him. A couple more weeks later, I was riding him in the arena. After a couple of months, we started learning to jump together and went on trail rides where, between his height and mine, I could pick the choice piñón seeds off the trees that no one else could reach. I was 12; the cowboys were NOT happy. Unlike most horses, he would lie down to take a nap. I would lie down on him, and we’d get in a snuggly little siesta every afternoon. It could be a Hallmark movie; I illustrated a one-page comic about it, which you can see in my Art, Illustrating, & Writing Portfolio (COMING SOON).