Impact Stories
People Centered Leadership
Empowering a Design Team Through People-First Leadership
Challenge
At North America’s largest railroad, the sole UX team - Experience Design - was unfunded and mission-confused. Dubbed “the Fun team” for its focus on connection events rather than generating outcomes, the team lacked organizational impact. Team members were encouraged to work on "billable engagements" to stay off the budget "baseline". The employees, fearful for their jobs, lacked clear objectives, limiting their and the team's contribution to the company’s strategic goals.
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Background
At North America’s largest railroad, the sole UX team - Experience Design - was unfunded and mission-confused. Dubbed “the Fun team” for its focus on connection events rather than generating outcomes, the team lacked organizational impact. Team members were encouraged to work on "billable engagements" to stay off the budget "baseline". The employees, fearful for their jobs, lacked clear objectives, limiting their and the team's contribution to the company’s strategic goals.
​Approach
By
​Impact
Team Transformation: Evolved a reactive, unfunded group into a dynamic 17-person UX, research, and product design team.
Enterprise Influence: Drove UX transformation across 40+ portfolios, from modernizing transportation systems to enhancing digital customer experiences.​
Outcomes: Led 320+ design initiatives in 2020, hosted a company-wide innovation hackathon that resulted in two patents (~$100M value) and multiple patent applications, and redefined capital planning for a $125M portfolio with a user-centered approach.​
Takeaway
By prioritizing people, we unlocked a culture of innovation that not only enhanced job satisfaction but also delivered significant business results. When teams feel seen and valued, their creativity and dedication drive transformational change. y putting people first, I transformed the team’s culture and focus. I implemented structured engagement budgets, opportunity tracking, and satisfaction metrics for every project. This approach fostered an environment where every team member felt valued and empowered, enabling us to forge strong partnerships with executives and align our work with top corporate priorities.
Product Design, Vision & Strategy
Empowering a Design Team Through People-First Leadership
Challenge
At North America’s largest railroad, the sole UX team - Experience Design - was unfunded and mission-confused. Dubbed “the Fun team” for its focus on connection events and lack of organizational impact, team members were encouraged to work on "billable engagements" to stay off the budget "baseline". The employees, fearful for their jobs, lacked vision and clear objectives, limiting their contribution to the company’s strategic goals.
Background
By
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​Approach
By
​Impact
Team Transformation: Evolved a reactive, unfunded group into a dynamic 17-person UX, research, and product design team.
Enterprise Influence: Drove UX transformation across 40+ portfolios, from modernizing transportation systems to enhancing digital customer experiences.​
Outcomes: Led 320+ design initiatives in 2020, hosted a company-wide innovation hackathon that resulted in two patents (~$100M value) and multiple patent applications, and redefined capital planning for a $125M portfolio with a user-centered approach.​
Takeaway
By prioritizing people, we unlocked a culture of innovation that not only enhanced job satisfaction but also delivered significant business results. When teams feel seen and valued, their creativity and dedication drive transformational change. y putting people first, I transformed the team’s culture and focus. I implemented structured engagement budgets, opportunity tracking, and satisfaction metrics for every project. This approach fostered an environment where every team member felt valued and empowered, enabling us to forge strong partnerships with executives and align our work with top corporate priorities.
Enterprise UX
Team Leadership, P&L & Corporate Capital Planning
Led strategy, optimization and implementation of digital customer experience. Strategy generated 14 net new products including the 1st-in-industry shipment Geofence. Owned end-to-end quality of digital journey. Company subject matter expert on digital CX product management. Owned change management processes. Affected 80K users generating ~23 billion annual revenue.
Product Design, Vision & Strategy
Enterprise Product Leadership
Led strategy, optimization and implementation of digital customer experience. Strategy generated 14 net new products including the 1st-in-industry shipment Geofence. Owned end-to-end quality of digital journey. Company subject matter expert on digital CX product management. Owned change management processes. Affected 80K users generating ~23 billion annual revenue.
Outcome Focused
Deployed data-first, hypotheses-based research to de-risk technical and strategy projects; created end-user impact via persons, ethnographic research, product validation and beta testing. 1 example project logged 1581 observations summarized into 24 pain points with 5 critical focus areas that changed the product selection process and MVP for an enterprise shift in operations metrics.
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