Humana, Inc.
DesignOps Leadership
I started my career as a design practitioner—deep in the craft, solving user problems through pixels and prototypes. I loved the way a well-placed interaction or a thoughtful layout could shift someone’s experience from frustrating to intuitive. But over time, I began to see the bigger picture. Great design doesn’t just happen in isolation—it thrives in systems, in culture, and in the connective tissue between disciplines.
That realization marked the beginning of my transition into design leadership. I moved from designing interfaces to developing teams, processes, and strategies. I became increasingly focused on how design could scale, how it could earn its seat at the table, and how it could drive measurable value across the enterprise. That path led me to Design Operations—a discipline that felt like the perfect intersection of creativity, systems thinking, and organizational impact.
After a long trajectory of design decentralization at Humana, there was a opportunity to help rebuild the Design function through the Digital Experience Transformation organization. I proposed a DesignOps practice, and stepped into a role where I could help shape not just what was being designed, but how we designed. In that role, I’ve had the opportunity to build and mature frameworks for collaboration, governance, and delivery. I’ve partnered with executive Design leadership to align design with business outcomes. I’ve also helped evolve the enterprise digital design system from a basic UI toolkit, to a shared visual language and set of design standards that unifies customer experience and accelerates innovation.
Embracing DesignOps gave me more than a new focus—it gave me a platform to champion designers, untangle complexity, and amplify the strategic value of design across the enterprise. It’s where I discovered my purpose: not just as a contributor, but as a catalyst. A force multiplier.
Today, I lead with the conviction that operational excellence fuels creative brilliance. When design is empowered to operate at its full potential—with the right systems, support, and alignment—it doesn’t just shape better products. It reshapes how organizations think, collaborate, and deliver impact.
LEADERSHIP and organizational impact
Building and scaling the DesignOps function to support a multidisciplinary team of 70+ product designers, researchers, service designers, and content strategists across Medicare Advantage and Medicaid product lines—enabling design outcomes across 12+ agile teams and 20+ digital products, experiences and services.
Supporting operational integration of design into Lean Product Management and Agile Release Trains, increasing design velocity and reducing bottlenecks through improved sprint alignment, backlog grooming, prioritization and cross-functional coordination.
Developing and governing a centralized design system optimized for enterprise scale, resulting in a significant increase in adoption across enterprise product teams.
Hired and embedded a digital accessibility expert, shifting accessibility left in the design lifecycle, reducing audit risk while cutting remediation-related technical debt.
Partnering with Design leadership to streamline workflows, reducing design cycle time and improving cross-functional handoff efficiency through standardized intake, review, and delivery processes.
Enabling greater time and opportunity for innovation and visionary work, resulting in an increase in strategic design capacity across teams and a measurable uptick in concept-driven initiatives and exploratory prototypes.
Instituting capacity planning and resource forecasting models, achieving alignment between design staffing and business priorities, and enabling proactive hiring and contracting to meet fluctuating demand.
Spearheading an enterprise-wide initiative with HR and Compensation to modernize Design roles, job descriptions, and leveling criteria—improving design talent acquisition and associate retention.
Managing a $2.5M annual operational budget, overseeing tooling, vendor contracts, team growth, and professional development investments.
Developing strategic plans for AI-enhanced design workflows, laying the foundation for intelligent design automation, predictive UX insights, and scalable personalization across digital products.