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CV

Professional Summary

My passion is to deliver products that work effortlessly for the people who use them. My ambition is to make business better by delivering improvements in people’s lives. 

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I am a skilled communicator with a strong belief in transparency and inclusion. I actively contribute to developing a welcoming culture that is sustainable through growth and change.

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  • Leader of user experience design, visual design, and design strategy

  • Great organisational skills with experience working across multiple, concurrent programmes

  • Strong written communication and presentation and influencing skills.

  • Experience managing complex problems and delivering elegant, intuitive experiences

  • Proven track record of leading design through business-wide transformation projects

  • Ability to work at differing levels of detail, both big picture and complex detailed issues

Skills

Hard skills:

User experience design: design, strategy, research and delivery    

Team building    Process design and development   

 Senior stakeholder management   Coaching and mentoring   

  Agile and Scrum methodologies    Budget management  

  Prioritisation 

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Soft skills:

Respectful & empathetic leader   Transparent 

 Excellent relationship building skills  Helpful & caring  

Positive & energetic   Strong negotiation skills   

 Friendly & approachable   Highly collaborative team player ​

Work Experience

December 2019 – present

Director of UX - Aptitude Software

Aptitude provides financial management software to the CFO with the goal of enabling finance departments to optimise performance, reach goals and be future-ready. Until 2019 Aptitude practised minimal, tactical UX. Their experience aspirations are now much more sophisticated. My role is to be the change agent for this ambition; to build a team and design the processes that will deliver that change. I am responsible for defining and what a successful experience looks and feels like across a portfolio of 6 complex, global products, advocating for a business-wide customer-centric approach.

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In addition to my role as Head of UX, I sit on the Diversity & Inclusion advocacy group, the Pensions Committee as an employee representative, and the Social Committee who organise company events.

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Key accomplishments:

  • Developed a clear strategy aligned with business goals

  • Led the introduction and implementation of a design system

  • Led the development of a research repository

  • Analysed and improved ways of working - tooling and processes

  • Provided design education to the wider business

  • Represented the business externally

  • Increased team satisfaction dramatically

  • Introduced accessibility to the product development process 

  • Implemented a digital adoption platform: vendor assessment, procurement, implementation

  • Implemented a feedback tool: vendor assessment, procurement, implementation

  • Skill gap analysis, hiring and resource and growth management 

  • Measuring and monitoring the impact of design changes

  • Benchmarking the current experience and setting KPI’s

  • Created and executing a plan for to ongoing development of the design team and business UX maturity

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I began this role as Head of UX, and was promoted in March 2022 to Director of UX

August 2019 – December 2019

Lead UX Designer and Partner - Waitrose & Partners

Led the UX strategy for the split from Ocado, which marked the end of a 15-year business relationship between Waitrose and Ocado. The challenge for Waitrose was to gain back their customer base who were subsequently owned by Ocado. It was a once in a lifetime business opportunity for the John Lewis Partnership to change their whole business model.

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Key accomplishments:

  • Developed an end to end customer journey map

  • Designed new concepts for customers to switch back to Waitrose 

  • Ensured ruthless focused on the most important features for Ocado shoppers

  • Improved collaboration across departments including marketing, development, supply chain, distribution and in-store experience

  • Created UX artefacts (user flows, empathy maps, prototypes, personas etc)

  • Developed and refined a prioritised UX backlog to deliver against

  • Worked closely with insight and data teams to analyse where our efforts were best spent

  • Led innovation of new products and services

January 2017 – May 2019

Digital Strategy Lead - Citizens Advice

Responsible for the strategy and innovation within the digital department, ensuring it was user focused. Key figure in leading the digital transformation at Citizens Advice, successfully improving their delivery model and ways of working. Introduced software that made a marked improvement in team efficiency across UX, research and content design teams. Successfully influenced the executive team and board of trustees to sign off the creation of an innovation lab. 

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Key accomplishments:

  • Conceived of and developed a prioritisation tool that has been adopted by GDS

  • Worked on search improvements

  • Organised quarterly firebreak sprints to encourage innovation

  • Developed a comprehensive feedback strategy

  • Worked on digital transformation and change management

  • Implemented and monitored new processes and governance

  • Led the innovation of new products and services including “Help to Claim”

  • Represented the organisation externally numerous times

  • Recruited a UX design team

February 2016 to December 2016

Head of UX - Aqueduct Advertising & Design

Responsible for leading, developing and championing the UX proposition for Aqueduct and its clients (including Team GB, Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, Queens Park Rangers, Trafalgar, and Visa). Led a small team of designers and researchers who helped inspire the wider business to embrace user-focused product development. 

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Key accomplishments:

  • Instrumental in securing Tottenham Hotspur as a client

  • Led a major redesign of Queens Park Rangers club website

  • Defined the vision and purpose of the UX team

  • Led workshops and set timeframes for key deliverables

  • Led client communication to identify user needs 

  • Undertook heuristic evaluations for clients

  • Developed research and testing plans

  • Presenting designs to stakeholders & clients

  • Developed UX artefacts such as user flows, personas, empathy maps, mental models

  • Mentoring and coaching of direct reports

Jan 2014 to Jan 2016

Lead User Experience Designer - Time Inc.

Dec 2012 – Dec 2013

Senior Front End & UX Developer - Time Inc.

Aug 2010 – Dec 2012

Front End Developer and Scrum Master - Time Inc.

Oct 2009 – Aug 2010

User Experience Developer - Snow Valley (Micros)

Nov 2007 – Oct 2009

Web developer - The Art Newspaper

Education

2021

Web accessibility and inclusive design training | Kutyla Design

2003 - 2004

MA in Aesthetics & Art Theory | Middlesex University 

2000 - 2003

BA Sculpture | University of the Arts London

2017 - 2021

UX Certification | Nielsen Norman Group

  • Design systems and pattern libraries - September 2021

  • The UX VP/Director - July 2021

  • Leading highly effective UX teams - July 2021

  • Complex Applications and Websites - July 2017

  • Information Architecture: Structure - July 2017

  • Information Architecture: Navigation - July 2017

  • The Human Mind and Usability - July 2017

  • Persuasive Web Design - July 2017

  • Wireframing and Prototyping - July 2017

  • UX Basic Training - July 2017

Interests

When I'm not at work, you'll find me in the garden with my hands in the soil. 

Other things that keep me occupied are hula hooping, rollerskating and JuJitsu.

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