ABOUT
Design teams rarely lack judgment; what they lack is the evidence to make anyone believe it
That gap is what I've spent my career closing. In my current role, I finally have all the pieces in one place. Design, research, Voice of Customer, telemetry, and content report into one function, answering to the same standard of evidence. I get to see what that does to the quality of the decisions that come out of it. It's the first job where I've had the room to run the whole argument, and the reason I care about where design leadership goes next.
Ten capabilities, all asking the same question: is the experience delivering value?
THE PATH HERE
My first seven years were in consulting, which meant a new industry every few months and a lot of flagship products turning out to have the same problems wearing different clothes. That is where I learned to spot patterns. I taught human-computer interaction at DePaul University during those years too, which is still the fastest way I know to find out whether you actually understand something.
Everything since has been a longer version of the same work: build the function properly, then prove it holds up when someone checks. The numbers behind each stop are on the Experience page.
I've spoken at UXPA, ConveyUX, Tech ConneXt, and Midwest UX, including a day-long usability workshop, and I've been a guest on the Fail Faster podcast.
2006 - 2013
2013 - 2021
2021 - 2022
2022 - PRESENT
Consulting
Sapient, Centralis
ZS
UX Lead through Senior Director
Trifacta
Head of Design
Alteryx
VP of Design; first to hold the role
BEYOND THE RESUME
“In too many rooms, design still gets treated like hot sauce instead of yeast, something you add at the end rather than the thing the whole product rises on.”
I got here sideways. The plan was law school, and I studied political science fully intending to go, and then I stalled.
What I needed was a paycheck. That turned into a job running an international youth exchange program, which turned into night classes learning to code because our students had no way to apply online.
One of those classes handed me Don Norman's The Psychology of Everyday Things and I had a full chorus-of-angels moment. Logic and creativity, systems and people, in the same job. To my family's horror, I quit my job and went back to school for my Masters in Human-computer Interaction. It remains one of the best decisions I ever made.
My HCI brain never really switches off. I still rewrite bad menus in my head, squint at parking signs that seem designed to generate tickets, and lose patience with any office microwave that has thirteen buttons and no clock. It's the same reflex that got me into this work in the first place, and it doesn't come with a mute button.
It shows up at home too, mostly as an enthusiasm for anything with structure. I cook, seriously enough to have opinions about coq au vin. I keep two books going at all times, one business and one entirely not. I believe small rituals hold real power, which is either a leadership philosophy or a justification for spending that long crafting my AM latte.
"Elizabeth can simplify the complex, make sense of the vague, and zoom out from the clutter. She's taught me to ask better questions, think more strategically, and find simplicity amidst the noise."
Direct Report