Design Systems Strategist & Hands-On Architect of Excellence.

As a Design Systems Strategist and hands-on Architect with over two decades of experience, I've dedicated my career to the strategic intersection where Product Strategy, Product Design (UX/UI), and Front-end Code converge. My focus is on architecting, leading, designing, building, and scaling high-impact Design Systems that empower organizations. I thrive on creating the foundational frameworks for companies like CVS Health, Citizens Bank (where I spearheaded 0-to-1 systems), and BlackLine, enabling them to deliver consistent, accessible, and high-quality digital experiences efficiently.

Design Systems are my superpower 🦸‍♂️⚡

My Hybrid Approach: Bridging Design, Code & Strategy

My unique hybrid background in Product Strategy, Product Design (UX/UI), and Front-end Code Implementation allows me to operate effectively across these domains, truly acting as the 'glue' between disciplines. I'm often both the strategic Lead setting the vision and the core hands-on Product Designer/UX Engineer meticulously crafting the components and ensuring their flawless implementation. This holistic, systems-thinking approach, rooted in deep craftsmanship, ensures the solutions I build are not just elegant and user-centered but also practical, maintainable, scalable, and readily adopted by both design and engineering teams.

Core Expertise

My work focuses on the full design system lifecycle, encompassing:

• ✅ Strategy & Product Definition: Defining compelling system visions and strategic roadmaps aligned with overarching product goals and business objectives. Expertly gathering requirements from diverse stakeholders, translating needs into clear user/job stories for incremental feature delivery, performing systemic audits to identify foundational gaps or opportunities, and planning phased rollouts and adoption strategies across complex product ecosystems.
• ✅ Scalable Architecture & Governance: Architecting robust, scalable, and themeable system foundations, primitives, comprehensive component libraries, and clear, reusable patterns. Establishing detailed design token systems and strategies (for color, typography, spacing, etc.) and implementing pragmatic governance models (contribution workflows, versioning, quality control) that ensure consistency while fostering collaboration and evolution.
• ✅ Design-to-Code Mastery & Parity: Mastering the end-to-end creation and meticulous synchronization of design tokens, visual foundations, components, and interactive patterns across design tools (Figma, Sketch) and multi-platform Front-end Code (HTML, CSS, JS/TS across frameworks like React, Angular, Vanilla JS, etc.). Meticulously crafting parallel APIs for both design assets and coded components, ensuring pixel-perfect parity and design fidelity through rigorous hands-on QA, detailed code reviews (PRs), and direct code/styling contributions when needed to accelerate progress and maintain quality.
• ✅ Accessibility (A11y) & Inclusive Design: Championing and embedding WCAG standards and inclusive design principles deeply within the system's core architecture, component design, and documentation from the outset, ensuring the system enables the development of accessible products by default for all users.
• ✅ Cross-Functional Collaboration & Enablement: Fostering seamless, collaborative partnerships between Design, Engineering, and Product teams. Driving system understanding and adoption across large organizations through the creation of clear, actionable documentation, targeted training sessions, well-defined contribution models, and proactive support.
• ✅ Hybrid Leadership & Impact Measurement: Leading effectively both strategically (defining vision, managing roadmaps, establishing governance) and through deep hands-on contribution, mentorship of designers and engineers, and fostering a culture of design excellence. Focused on demonstrating the tangible ROI and business value of design systems through measurable improvements in development efficiency, team velocity, product consistency, and overall quality.

My Philosophy & Principles

I approach design systems not as static libraries, but as living, interconnected ecosystems. True success lies in understanding how every element – from the strategic vision down to the coded implementation of a component variant – impacts the whole. Operating with meticulous attention to detail and a systems-thinking mindset allows me to anticipate dependencies and ensure harmony across the entire product development lifecycle. My work is guided by these core principles: