1. History of Your Design Story:

What was your first design job and following career? What was your background leading into that role, and what was it like to be a designer at that time?

My first design-related job after graduating with a degree in software engineering was for an entrepreneur who ran a TV production company. I was employee number 1 and built an early version of “YouTube" to put the company's video library online. The company later pivoted and became the first web agency in the North of England, where I co-founded Zebra Communications. After that, I moved to the US and held various design leadership roles at Vanguard, USAA, and Capital One before becoming the Head of Design for Consumer at Verizon.

My background was in software engineering from Newcastle University, but I considered myself a fairly horrible programmer who was more interested in problem-solving and seeing what I could do with systems rather than building them from scratch. I graduated during a time when the internet was just starting to become a major technology and at my first job, I had to do a bit of everything, including coding, system administration, and design. I gravitated towards information architecture and interaction design, even before those terms were widely used.

2. Design Leadership Journey:

What is your current role and scope? How did your cumulative career experiences enable you to get to where you are today? Any key lessons? How did these experiences shape your worldview on design and business? 

My current role is the Head of Design for Consumer at Verizon. I am responsible for the user experience and design of the company's consumer products and services across all channels - digital, retail stores, call centers, and the industrial design of our hardware products.

My experiences at Vanguard, USAA, and Capital One, taught me a key lesson - that designers must focus on the business impact of their work. I emphasize that designers need to speak the language of business and demonstrate how their work contributes to business outcomes.

I believe that good design doesn't happen in a silo and requires strong collaboration with product managers, engineers, and business leaders. Design is not just about aesthetics but is a strategic function that is essential for driving business value and creating positive customer experiences.

3. Leadership Philosophy:

What makes a strategic design executive? How do you think of and measure success as a design executive? How does that speak to what kind of role design executives need to play in the 21st century? What’s been your approach to scaling design’s impact without losing creative energy or speed?

I believe a strategic design executive is a results-oriented leader who builds and motivates teams of design and customer experience professionals. It’s key to successfully integrate design into the culture of large enterprises and act as an evangelist for creating user experiences, products, and services within the context of business goals and customer needs.

My approach reflects the modern role of a design executive as a catalyst for company-wide transformation. I believe that design is not just about aesthetics but is a strategic function essential for driving business value. A 21st-century design executive must be able to align design with business strategy and advocate for its value at the highest levels of an organization, up to and including the CEO.

My approach to scaling design’s impact without losing creative energy or speed is the "PEOPLE, PRACTICES, PURPOSE, PORTFOLIO" framework. To scale the design organization, I focused on:

- PEOPLE: Building a talented senior leadership team and a People Development team to foster internal talent growth.

- PRACTICES: Creating a Design Operations team to manage tools, budget, events, communications, and recruiting, which allowed the design teams to work more efficiently.

- PURPOSE: Bringing stability and clarity to the organization and evolving its purpose to be a catalyst for "experience transformation."

- PORTFOLIO: Making the design team indispensable partners for thousands of business initiatives, ensuring we support strategic imperatives.

4. Forward-looking Changes in the Industry:

What pivotal changes do we need to make as a profession? What is holding us back, and where do we need to make concerted changes? 

As a profession we need to think more broadly about our impact and to focus on systems and connections. We should not just be “solving problems right”, but ensuring we are “solving the right problems." I believe that the experiences we're all striving to create are doomed to get worse unless we augment the management systems and models our organizations use to keep themselves running.

We need to make concerted changes by using some of our design talent to make connections - on ourselves, our organizations, and the way we work. In doing so, we can have a lasting impact on our organizations beyond typical product design decisions like features and UI.

5. Future of Your Design Org - Roles, Teams Structures, and Capabilities:

What new skillsets are becoming essential on your team, and how are you helping designers evolve beyond traditional roles? How are you thinking about the role of AI in your design practice, both as a tool and as a strategic differentiator?

At Verizon as well as focusing on providing support, training, tools, coaching, and career paths for designers in traditional design disciplines we’re investing in design-specific data analysts to provide the data points we need to make sound design decisions. Of course we’re also assessing our level of AI literacy across the team and developing a roadmap for how we need to invest in AI tools and training.

6. Vision for DXC:

What is your vision for DXC? How do you see us making a positive impact on our members, the design industry, and the broader business world?

The Design Executive Council is uniquely positioned to provide a shared vision and learning environment for what works, and what doesn’t as design leaders and design teams strive to have more and more influence shaping the future of the organizations they’re working within. I’m a big believer in the “fail fast and learn from failure” philosophy and the DXC is a force-multiplier for this - allowing all of us to leverage the experience of our peers!

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