A decade (and counting) of practice
From scrappy startups to 30-person design orgs, I’ve played a lot of roles—shaping product vision, prototyping new ideas, mentoring teammates, and building the systems that help teams scale.
As a (former) teacher turned designer, I move fluidly between hands-on execution and strategic leadership, often landing in the middle: coaching, storytelling, influencing and helping people uplevel along the way.
Lead Product Designer
Buildertrend, Remote, January 2022 — Present
Leading the design for a new flagship product (Buildertrend Purchasing) to bring a marketplace of savings on material purchases to 23,000 SMBs.
Developing and pitching a long-term vision for a universal product data catalog by orchestrating a multi-quarter research effort and prototyping concepts with 35 Builder and Supplier customers. This initiative shaped the strategic roadmap for the Materials business unit and secured a $250K investment to start building toward the necessary infrastructure.
Establishing the information architecture model and onboarding process for adding new material supplier catalogs, through facilitating a series of cross-functional workshops to define, test, and iterate. Scaling our product information management system from 0 to 22,000+ items in 3 months and reducing onboarding time from 60 days to 14 days.
Planning, facilitating, and synthesizing three remote workshops with senior, director, and C-suite leaders to ground exploration into a new data product. Aligning stakeholders with clear definitions for ideal customers and a value proposition canvas that outlined next steps to test an MVP and potential go-to-market strategy with prospective users.
Senior Product Designer
Buildertrend, Remote, February 2021 — January 2022
Designed and tested the initial solution for applying, collecting, and managing taxes across six core financial features. The phased launch prioritized the #1 requested feature from customers and addressed longstanding product feedback areas spanning four years.
Partnered with senior design leaders to facilitate workshops that developed unified visual and interaction principles, contributing to the establishment of the Blueprint Design System and aiding in the integration of a newly combined team of 12 designers joined
CoConstruct, Remote, February 2020 — February 2021
Led the development of the Shibui design system from the ground up to modernize web and mobile products; established foundational components in 3 months and built 75+ components in 9 months, integrated with new feature releases by product teams.
Collaborated closely with front-end developers to build a seamless tooling chain, integrating design tools (Sketch), UI testing (Chromatic), a coded component library (Storybook), and feature development (Zeplin) throughout the product development lifecycle.
Conducted a thorough mobile app usability audit and redesign, reducing navigation levels from 7 to 3, particularly enhancing Specifications and Selections. This streamlined approach decreased documentation retrieval time from 15 to 4 seconds for users on job sites.
Senior User Experience Designer
Field Nation, Minneapolis, MN, December 2019 — February 2020
Implemented a data-informed design methodology that guided a cross-functional team in addressing critical search and filter tool issues within the platform's most heavily utilized feature. This initiative led to a redesigned component, maintaining an opt-in rate of nearly 87% from the beta rollout to GA release.
Piloted a governance model featuring bi-weekly working sessions, demos, and Storybook documentation, creating a framework that enhanced collaboration on the design system and enabled teams in the U.S. and Bangladesh to effectively self-serve
User Experience Designer
Field Nation, Minneapolis, MN, June 2016 — December 2019
Owned the end-to-end execution of Field Nation’s first Design System, transforming 3 front-end libraries and interface styles into a single robust design language with over 200+ components and a set of common patterns that solidified UX standards for the platform.
Co-developed and pitched a Design System strategy with the Platform Product Owner, transforming the component library project into a fully-funded initiative. Secured executive approval to integrate it into quarterly goals and recognized as a strategic foundation of the product roadmap by the Director of Product
Spearheaded the overhaul of web app navigation patterns and information architecture for Buyers and Providers, cutting manual support intervention by 25% and creating scalable patterns for new product and feature introductions across the marketplace
Coordinated the development of a unified visual language with marketing designers, harmonizing Field Nation's brand across web, mobile, social media, and physical mediums. This evolution heightened brand recognition, particularly following the exit of a major competitor
SportsEngine, Minneapolis, MN, September 2015 — June 2016
Lead the concept, design and usability testing of a brand new product that enabled sports organizations to invoice and digitally collect payments from athletes. Successfully processed $100,000 worth of payments in the first week of launch and remained one of the core features that helped acquire new customers
Optimized component libraries and UI patterns for both new and legacy products, improving the speed of prototyping and overall communication between designers and front-end engineers and quality assurance testers
Education and Learning
Describing the ROI of Design, Ryan Scott, May 2025
Demystifying Vision, Design Dept., March 2023
MIT's Approach to Design Thinking, January 2019
BLOC Design Apprenticeship, January 2015 — June 2015
B.S. Education, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2011
Summa Cum Laude
Deans List 10 Semesters
Honors from the UWM Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Outstanding Student Research Award from the UWM History Department