Blending Substance with Style.

Human-Centered Designer  |  Design System Enthusiast  |  Servant Leader

Enterprise Design Systems Strategy



Company: Vanguard is a global investment management company with headquarters in the U.S., founded in 1975 with over $10.4 trillion in assets under management.

Objective: An enterprise design system would enhance modernization in digital platforms across investor services, web/mobile applications, and internal tools. It would create a unified design approach for product, engineering, marketing, and customer experience teams. Additionally, design systems support agile product development and cohesive user experience across multiple investment product lines. This reduces design/development redundancies and allows for rapid experimentation and enables more strategic and product-specific solutions. (2022-2024)




UX challenges

Taking an iterative and thoughtful approach to building and maintaining a design system so that it represents the digital manifestation of the brand, meets the needs of every adopting team, and is usable and accessible for the user experience.

UX solutions

Let's talk about design systems and their beautiful evolution. Picture this: it all starts with a small, passionate team crafting core components to showcase what's possible. They're laying the groundwork with essential UI elements - the building blocks that will shape every digital interaction.

Then magic happens. As teams catch the vision, that initial concept blossoms into something bigger. We're talking a rich component library backed by clear documentation that gets everyone speaking the same design language.

Here's where it gets really exciting. The system grows more sophisticated through real-world use and feedback. Product teams contribute insights that refine and expand our design tools. We're not just building components anymore - we're crafting a strategic foundation for incredible digital experiences.

Watch as teams embrace this new way of working. What started as an experiment becomes essential infrastructure. There's less friction, more innovation, and digital products that truly shine. The design system evolves into a living framework that captures your organization's unique perspective and approach.

At its peak, a mature design system is transformative. It creates harmony across the organization through shared understanding and tools. Teams iterate faster, experiences become more consistent, and the whole process of building digital products just flows better. With each iteration, the system grows stronger, documentation gets clearer, and teams work together more seamlessly. Take a deeper dive in the Design Systems section of my portfolio.



UX and Digital Marketing Strategy



Company: BAYADA Home Health Care, a $1 billion privately-owned company, with over 290 offices in 22 states and partnerships in Germany and India

Objective: Redesign the enterprise website to be responsive, meet user needs, and hit business objectives (2014-2015)




UX challenges

Taking a brochure site and recoding it to be a fully responsive, optimized for search, and the largest power-marketing tool for the company required careful planning. As digital marketing became more of a priority, so did proving conversions. BAYADA needed a site that would target the right audience at the right time in their buyer journey, and then be able to "close the loop" as we called it. Meaning - being able to show that visitors converted to customers. Content needed to include keywords, proper metadata, and fast page load speed to boost SEO. This was in the midst of "Mobilegeddon" by google, when mobile-friendly sites would get preference.

UX solutions

This was an incredible opportunity to do things right. As a leader, I considered hand-coded HTML, WordPress, or HubSpot for the full responsive conversion. After cost/benefit and effort/impact analyses, I decided hand-coding HTML and CSS would allow us to own the content and the hosting server to have more flexibility. A Content Optimization System (COS) would prove to be more valuable for landing pages once our digital marketing efforts stabilized.

At the same time, the public site was due for a server upgrade. It was perfect timing and it further proved the decision to code and host our own sites was the right one. After working with IT, my team and I planned and implemented the best systems structure to compliment the new site. This included establishing 301 permanent redirects, changing the file naming structure for SEO and sustainability purposes, and eliminating duplicative content. Page load speed decreased through caching and minifying files. Through it all, one of the biggest opportunities was to make the site fully accessible. Being ability-aware during the rebuild boosted SEO and allowed the information to be more easily accessed by everyone.

Tracking leads was accomplished through the use of forms. Once a visitor supplied their name, my team manually matched leads with new customers. This manual effort was worth it because we were able to confidently prove conversion rate. Vanity URLs and specific 800 numbers were used to track paid advertising click-throughs and phone calls, thus providing value in digital marketing spending. A full content overhaul took place to include the Inbound methodology, by providing valuable content to draw users in, and continue to display fresh content to keep them coming back. An Ecosystem Site Map was created to see all of the sites connected to bayada.com to ensure nothing was missed. Finally, new features included chat and feedback functionality on every page. Visits and conversions continued to increase quarter over quarter, and the responsive redesign of the website became the number one marketing tool for the company.

 

Graphic Design

Logo Design

 

Thanksgiving Greeting Card - BAYADA Home Health Care

 

Salon Bridgette Collateral

 

Package Design

 

Additional samples of work from over the years can be found on Bēhance.
behance portfolio

What I Do

Working on the business, not in the business

Vanguard (2016-present)

I started my Vanguard career in International Marketing as a Senior UX Designer. I took pride in my human-centered design approach to fulfill business needs and contribute to the success of providing intuitive and engaging experiences. However, when marketing efforts were dispersed to the international regions themselves, I pursued a role in Institutional Marketing (B2B) where I was quickly promoted to Design Manager. This fulfilling role, where I had 18 direct reports, reignited my love for servant leadership and resulted in the highest honor of a distinguished rating at my performance review. But a new passion started to emerge - design systems. The concept of design systems embodied everything I had ever hoped for my team: clarity, efficiency, maintainability. In my next move, I took a leap of faith to lead the UX team responsible for Vanguard's Design System. My motivating factor centered on the positive impact this could have for teams across Vanguard.

Web Design and Development Consultant (ongoing)

I've established great relationships over the years, and provide ongoing consultant work for many clients including BAYADA Home Health Care, Bodek and Rhodes, and Acceleration Strategies. I have over 15 years of experience as a graphic and web designer. My industry knowledge covers home health care, pharmaceutical, apparel, new home communities, beauty, and hospitality and tourism. My expertise lies in front-end web development, UX design, and digital marketing. I consider myself a master at photoshop and HTML. What I find the most satisfying is problem solving, particularly when I can use creativity and critical thinking to engineer working products.

BAYADA Home Health Care (2009-2015)

As the Digital Design & Development Manager for BAYADA Home Health Care, I managed digital design/development services and strategy for the $1 billion privately-owned company. For an organization that has 290 offices in 22 states, as well as partnerships in India and Germany, it was rare to find a lull in production especially during and after the rebranding in 2012. From that point forward, my primary focus was on creating, updating, and maintaining the public website www.bayada.com; the careers site www.bayada.com/careers; microsites and landing pages; branded graphics for the BAYADA Home Health Care social media pages; and digital advertising for paid campaigns.

Case Studies

September 2015
Facebook graphic surpasses the standard 100 likes

"BAYADA welcomes the Pope…" graphic hits 144 likes and 21 shares https://goo.gl/sjjtWc

June 2014
Bounce rate improves after bayada.com responsive redesign launch on 6/20/14

Direct traffic bounce rate improved by 11.79%
Organic traffic bounce rate improved by 28.32%
Social traffic bounce rate improved by 26.22%

July 2014

The "How to Pay" web page better retains visitors after site redesign

Bounce Rate has reduced by 28.73% and exit rate is slightly less on the most frequently visited page on the whole website. The redesign had definite impact on the improvement from a user experience level.

August 2014
Changing a graphic has lead to increased referral traffic

Changing “Search BAYADA Jobs” button to be larger on bayada.com/careers increased referral traffic to jobs.bayada.com by 40%

May - August 2014
Creative testing on Landing pages increases conversion

Landing page conversion rate for pay per click increased by 6.9% through creative testing from May to August.

Next

Who I Am

Professionally

I'm a designer and problem solver. I have a passion for solving communication problems, especially when there seem to be technical limitations. It's very satisfying seeing ideas and designs come to life and be successful. When you want to tell a story with a piece of information, I can step in to offer a visual solution, particularly from the end-user perspective.

Personally

I'm an adventurer. I seek, I find, I try, I thrive. At one time, I was a full-on adrenaline sports enthusiast. I've been skydiving, hang-gliding, abseiling, scuba diving, snowboarding, and diving with great white sharks. Incredibly, I even went to Las Vegas to compete in the American Poolplayers Association (APA) National Team Championships. On the other hand, I also enjoy the peaceful side of life, like going to the park, practicing yoga, playing golf, and enjoying time around the campfire.

Next

Say Hello.

Please feel free to contact me through LinkedIn messaging.