Guided by company direction and collective user insights, I led the research and design of core platform components aimed at achieving product-market fit. I delivered strategic, enterprise-grade features and information architecture — from scalable foundational designs to fully matured experiences aligned with the platform’s long-term vision. Key launches included a new onboarding experience, a redesigned data manager to optimize user workflows, RBAC, and a unified notification system.

‍Impact: 67% increase in task completion rate, onboarding training time cut by one-third, accelerating time-to-value.

As my experiences grew, my perspective on design leadership continued to evolve. The fundamental essence of design leadership of my view remained constant: driving impact for users and business through the promotion of user-centered design processes, advocating for its value, and fostering a design-centric culture. However, my approach to achieving these goals has transformed.

During my tenure at Watershed, I began by cultivating understanding and trust among individuals, departments, and stakeholders before pushing initiatives around design culture that I think has the value for the team. The lesson I've learned from this experience is that effective design leadership involves establishing strong connections with your close partners, stakeholders, and company, and adapting your design expertise to fit the specific context at hand.

I started to gain user insights actively through the channel that I created and I stored them in a single source of truth for broader accessibility. I noticed that different functions such as business and marketing also utilized it. Also by aligning my design principles with their expectations, I laid a solid foundation for establishing a product design process that aligned with the company's objectives and resources. This approach led to expedited feature releases.