Building
teams that
outlast
the plan.

The bank's consumer banking platform relied on a third-party solution facing deprecation. The vendor offered an updated product, but it carried the same limitations that had constrained us for years: limited customization, iFrame-driven experiences, additional costs for functional changes, and dependency on the vendor's roadmap.

A small cross-functional team from product, technology, and UX was assembled to evaluate options. I represented the design perspective and recognized quickly that no off-the-shelf solution could serve our client base's specific needs.

The organization was skeptical we could build end-to-end within the timeline. I led conversations with product and engineering to consolidate perspectives, then helped build the recommendation to build instead of buy. The case was grounded in long-term cost analysis, user impact, and the strategic value of owning our own experience.

I assembled a focused design team and coached them through an 18-month redesign covering every feature and service in the platform. We addressed known user pain points the previous solution couldn't accommodate, established scalable patterns for future iteration, and used the project to cement design QA as a formal quality control step before every release.

Development wrapped at the 24-month mark. The vendor later extended support for peer institutions who couldn't move as quickly. We had already finished.

At Applaudo Studios, I joined as the second designer on staff. By 2020 I was leading 21 designers and 10 trainees across multiple countries. At City National Bank, I joined a six-person team relying heavily on external vendors and built the internal infrastructure to bring that work in-house. At peak, 12 people reported directly to me.

Then came the reductions. In 2024, the bank reorganized and my team lost two designers overnight, with no advance warning. A year later, a second restructure eliminated my manager's position and transferred some of her responsibilities to me.

Both times I moved quickly. For the first reorg: immediate reallocation to preserve delivery continuity, then structural redesign to prevent the same vulnerability. For the second: a 30-day plan documented and communicated within days. I held sessions where I walked the team through exactly what I knew and how I would support them.

When my new manager was announced, I moved quickly to bring her up to speed. Managing up and managing down at the same time.

When Applaudo expanded from localized to fully distributed in 2017, the challenge wasn't logistics. It was cohesion. Designers who had worked side by side were now spread across countries and time zones. I needed a mechanism to keep them connected as a team, not just as a collection of individuals.

Design huddles were that mechanism. A regularly cadenced meeting built around three goals: sharing context across work streams, developing skills, and building culture. I brought them to City National Bank when I joined. One of the first things I implemented with a fully remote team during the early pandemic period.

At Applaudo, the team filled a shared card in Figma each week: what they were working on, a challenge they solved, and their "emotional pet" — a personal side project they fed regularly, like a tamagotchi. The ritual created just enough structure to make sharing feel safe.

The second half rotated between three formats: Fresh Eyes (rapid-fire critique where the team offers multiple framings on one designer's problem), Design Talks (one designer presents a practice-relevant topic, then leads discussion on what to adopt), and AMA (a guest from product, engineering, or sales shares their work to broaden the team's perspective).

At City National, the focus shifted toward sharpening presentation and facilitation skills. Designers lead discussions on topics like AI, requirements discovery, and content design standards.