Design Leadership
My experience spans brand design, creative direction, experience strategy. human-centered design and innovation, platform and design systems, data & artificial intelligence, and design leadership.
I'm passionate about empowering diversity, unleashing creativity, and improving ecology. And I see design as an infinitely scalable framework that can be applied to a business's biggest challenges and an employee's most acute opportunities. I've driven impact for large businesses and their customers - but also helped transform individual careers.
I’ve taught design to undergraduate and graduate students. I've mentored product professionals at every level, from interns and folks just breaking into the field to executives focused on scaling their impact and influence. I've led designers and non-designers at every level, across businesses and geographies.
I actively develop and maintain relationships with students and faculty from design programs across the country and love adding new schools and emerging talent to my network - and my pipeline.
I mentor students and professionals around the globe through ADP and Mentor Collective.
I am inspired by humility, curiosity and bravery. I believe human-centered design, combined with critical/systems thinking, is the path to valuable products and service that change lives and communities.
Leadership Experiences
Building a killer design team. Building a prototyping culture. Building awareness and appreciation for design. Connecting with and learning from our customers to solve their wickedest problems. Delivering design at scale for our AI-Driven Expert Platform. Shaping the brand that communicates our value to customers.
Making to Think, to Learn, to Tell a Story
I'm a huge believer that making prototypes is good for designers and non-designers. Making engages a more tangible part of your brain - and lends tangibility to the ideas we agree with in principle, but question the specifics. Prototypes drive behavior - and what people DO trumps what they say they'll do.
![james[1].png](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a729c6_2cd936251c8a47818230a01edb30a91c~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_323,h_323,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/a729c6_2cd936251c8a47818230a01edb30a91c~mv2.png)
Helping Early Career designers find their calling, their voice and their feet.
If you would like to spend 30 min discussing your portfolio, your ambitions and your options, you can find me and schedule an appointment on https://www.adplist.org/
What I'm writing about
I use Medium to write periodic observations on what I'm thinking about and what I'm doing about what I'm thinking about. Generally I focus on information I hope will be helpful to designers and aspiring designers. I've included links to some of my most read and shared articles here.
Listen
