Description

I'm an empathy-driven, versatile, problem-solver with 15+ years of collective design experience. I thrive in roles that seek to solve complex Product Design + Technology problems. Research and data motivated coupled with sharp design sensibility - I believe in intersecting business growth with user advocacy to create meaningful and memorable experiences.

Industry field of expertise

Languages

English
Native or bilingual
Spanish
Basic

Workplace preferences

Can work on-site

Dubai (up to 50km)

Independent Consultant
Product + Design Management / Creative
CONSULTING AND AUDITS
May 2023 - Today (3 years and 1 month)
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Working with startups, small/mid-size organizations and business owners on various CX, service and digital transformation projects.

- Ideation workshops, creative direction and go-to-market strategy for a regional
FoodTech startup.
Product Strategy Design Thinking Project Management
Sopra Banking Software
Head of Product Design
BANKING AND INSURANCE
November 2021 - February 2023 (1 year and 2 months)
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Early foundation and scale-up of the Product Design practice to power NEO - the company’s strategic Global Business Unit. I was responsible for structuring and managing how design integrates across multi-disciplinary teams working in product squads spread across the UK, Europe, Middle East and Asia.

- Built up the Product Design team from two to ten members within a year across a large global organization.
- Shortened idea to product feature turnaround time by 60% through implementation of a lean, systematic Design-at-Scale process across eight Product Squads to efficiently deliver on a SaaS model Digital banking suite.
- Brought together partner Design teams across the organization in achieving a federated Design System model to power ready-to-use coded components.
- Directed team efforts to build up and publish our Product Design System; set up Figma guidelines for component and feature design best practices.
- Effectively cut 24% of previous Design stack tooling spend by formalizing, managing access and budgeting for the team’s Design stack.
- Goal setting, mentoring and shaping a motivated team of designers to efficiently support squad Product Managers and meet tight design deadlines.
- Simplified an API-powered, low-code themeable, modular solution through OOUX; strengthening design-development coordination to meet quality goals.
- Hands-on approach which saw the team jump 4 Sprints ahead of development.
- Building administrative and operational design governance as the direct bridge for stakeholder buy-in and C-suite management.
Product design Team management User Experience Design Talent acquisition
Baraka Financial Limited
Lead Product Designer
BANKING AND INSURANCE
July 2021 - November 2021 (4 months)
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Aligned the startup’s Research/Design/Delivery activities to achieve maximum business impact and increase early adoption and engagement. The investment app has quickly grown to be the GCC’s simplest way to invest in US Stocks.
- Completely redesigned sign-up, account funding and stock portfolios based on user-feedback and support requests to achieve a 30% increase in conversions while reducing weekly KYC support queries by over 50%.
- Driving forward Lean User research, testing and customer-centric insights.
- Produced Interaction Flows, structuring a Design System and frameworks to help streamline the end-to-end Product development workstream.
- Used data-driven approaches to bring focus to regional customer expectations.