I believe great design leadership starts with ownership. Rather than waiting for direction, I look for opportunities to create clarity, align teams, and move important work forward.

Throughout my career, I’ve found that the most meaningful opportunities often sit between teams, functions, and competing priorities. My role is to connect people around a shared understanding of the problem, uncover opportunities, and build momentum toward meaningful outcomes.

Leadership isn’t about hierarchy—it’s about creating the conditions for teams to do their best work.

For an internal project at a securities bank, we were designing a new feature for a data product that involved a significant shift in the user interface. The design proposed a more streamlined and intuitive experience using an off-the-shelf component called AG Grid. However, some stakeholders, particularly from the engineering team, were resistant to this change. They were concerned that adopting this new design would require ongoing rework of the existing infrastructure, potentially leading to delays. Additionally, there were concerns about the licensing costs associated with this approach.

To address this, I first took the time to fully understand their concerns and constraints. I met with the engineering team to discuss the technical challenges they anticipated and explored ways to minimize the impact of the design change, such as simplifying certain interactions or prioritizing features to reduce implementation complexity.

I then advocated for the design by clearly communicating the user-centered reasoning behind the decision. I presented data from user research, showing that the proposed design covered 99% of the use cases we would be designing for and how it would significantly improve consistency and development efficiency, reduce friction, and ultimately drive higher engagement.

Managing stakeholders throughout the design process varies from project to project, as each stakeholder has their own "home base" of thinking—some are more conceptual, some more technical, and others have a mix. My goal is to clearly articulate the design rationale and purpose in a way that resonates with each stakeholder’s perspective, focusing on what they care about most. This requires framing the design through different lenses, ensuring it's understandable and relevant to their specific priorities.

Building and maintaining strategic relationships is crucial here. The best work I’ve delivered has come when those relationships were at their strongest, and a sense of camaraderie acted as a cultural glue across teams. Of course, it's not always this seamless, and I don’t rely on perfect relationships to drive success. If feedback conflicts with the design vision, I engage in open, collaborative discussions to explain how their input might impact the broader user experience or business goals. In such cases, I aim to balance accommodating the feedback with preserving the integrity of the design vision, often suggesting alternative solutions that still align with the core vision and objectives.