Experience

Early Warning | Operator of Zelle and Paze
February 2022 — Present, San Francisco, CA

Creative Director – Interim

July 2023 — Present

• Define how our family of  brands comes to life creatively across all surfaces and channels, including our Zelle OOH Halo campaigns to be released late fall/early winter 2023. 

• Champion bold ideas and creative approaches to telling our brand stories, aiming to forge deeper connections with both business/merchant and direct-to-consumer initiatives. My experience encompasses building, using, maintaining, and advocating for design systems to ensure consistency and coherence across all platforms and channels.

• Create  and define brand consistency that ensures that all materials support and strengthen our brand and personalities, particularity on our newly developing Paze brand. 

• Manage and mentor a growing team of creatives, including our in-house design team and project managers as well as multiple external agencies of various sizes focusing on different initiatives for our 3 brands - directing, inspiring and delivering on our creative vision; foster a culture and environment conducive to producing bold member-obsessed ideas

• Collaborate closely with product managers, user researchers, and engineering teams, I partner with great external teams, creative agencies, production, to understand customer needs, make informed design decisions, negotiate technical feasibility, and support agile teams in developing high-quality user interfaces.

Senior Graphic Designer

February 2022 — July 2023

• Support the internal B2B marketing team in event support—environment experiences, trade-show booth designs and coordinated, branded assets both printed and digital, and fully customized on-site digital games with Figma-— Iconography series for product bundles, and educational and sales support materials—printed & digital assets including white-papers, presentation decks, social media campaigns, product education. 

• Lead design development for icon library of over digital 250 icon illustrations for two brands: Early Warning and Zelle while working within established brand illustration style and defining the future style direction.

• Provide brand design, illustration, and design conceptual development — both digital and physical — for the Early Warning , Zelle and Paze Brands.

• Partner with internal brand & marketing leaders and individual contributors, as well as external agencies to develop B2B and B2C campaigns rooted in customer insights

• Provide design direction for new design requests creating impactful visuals and a strong, consistent brand image across all channels.

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Art Director

Citi Ventures & Innovation, Citi
December 2019 — February 2022, San Francisco, CA

• Lead design development and production of visual narrative as an environmental experience for Citi CIO (Chief Innovation Officer) Keynote at the World Economic Forum, in Davos 2020.

• Supported Citi’s obligation and commitment to protect the integrity and confidentiality of systems and data.

• Developed, and manage design concept and assets for “Innovators @ Citi” initiative which engaged +45k employees in innovation in 4 months.

• Supported Citi Ventures and Innovation in-house marketing team, and internal “Start-up Incubation” Institutional Banking  Group with visual storytelling, data interpretation for infographics, branding development, and visual assets for internal communications. 

 

 

Design Instructor, Typography

Academy of Art University
August 2016 — May 2021, San Francisco, CA

• Lead classes in the undergraduate Graphic Design program, both on-site and online in the topic of Typography: History, Hierarchy, Form and Practice, with a student rating of 4.9 out of 5. 

• Formerly lead classes in the Undergraduate Graphic Design program, both on-site and online, in topics ranging from Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, and Design Fundamentals, with a student rating of 4.7 out of 5.  

 

 

Creative Director 

Tropos Technologies, Inc.
October 2017 — October 2019, Morgan Hill, CA

• Lead multiple large-scale and small scale creative projects concurrently, while acing as the key decision maker to develop, define and drive the visual identity of 2 in-house brands, and the branding of all product lines. 

• Research and present creative directions and concepts for new projects and ongoing brand inspiration to all levels of leadership, including the CEO.  

• Collaborate across disciplines to understdand and execute brand vision and direction from beginning to comopletion of projects including: Scheduled, bid, produced and delivered  projects and communications through a range of media, including mobile and online platforms, e-communications, digital and print communications. 

• Lead digital design and developed UX design solutions: creating wireframes, storyboard, user flows, process flows, site maps, and overseeing in-house developers and outside contractors. 

• Lead development of environmental experiences, from bidding, to design & production, to implementation.

 

Art Director, Senior Designer

Research Foundation, City University of New York

October 2014 — October 2017, New York, NY

• Lead multiple large-scale and small scale creative projects concurrently, while acing as the key decision maker to develop, define and drive the visual identity of 2 in-house brands, and the branding of all product lines. 

• Research and present creative directions and concepts for new projects and ongoing brand inspiration to all levels of leadership, including the CEO.  

• Collaborate across disciplines to understand and execute brand vision and direction from beginning to completion of projects including: Scheduled, bid, produced and delivered  projects and communications through a range of media, including mobile and online platforms, e-communications, digital and print communications. 

• Lead interactive and visual digital design efforts and develop UX design solutions by analyzing business requirements and user needs to create user flows, task flow diagrams, wire-frames, and prototypes for stakeholder and user feedback. Oversee the creation of beautiful mock-ups consistent with UI guidelines and brand standards, while creating design documentation. Manage governance processes and internal release cycles, collaborating with stakeholders to maintain a prioritized backlog of work items. Apply human-centered design methodologies and lead cross-functional design sprints and workshops, evangelizing the design process throughout the organization.

• Lead development of environmental experiences, from bidding, to design & production, to implementation.

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Creative Director, Design Lead, Photographer

Mizuho America, Medical  

October 2016—March 2020, Hayward, California

Lead Design System development for the brand, marketing collateral, and sales collateral by collaborating with stakeholders to create and maintain and evolution in the branding while developing product catalog which included over 2000 medical instruments. 

Created Visual Design for marketing and sales materials including mock-ups, printed materials, digital ads, and event spaces. .

Created Design Documentation to specify the final designs and created commercial design input documentation for production and print teams. 

 

 

Art Director, Senior Visual Designer

Miningco, About.com
August 2013 — September 2014, New York, NY

• Created brand story, brand guidelines and brand assets for Miningco. 

• Visual Design for Miningco" from end to end: user interface and user experience from concept through development and deployment with delivery timeline of 90-days.

• Collaborated with small agile development team of four.

 

 

Creative Director

Senior Designer

Zero Motorcycles
January 2009 — June 2010, Santa Cruz, CA 

• Sourced, hired and managed creative talent: photographers, videographers, agencies, models,
  illustrators, graphic designers.  

• Created and managed all visual branding and brand standards. 

• Developed and managed visual storytelling and all creative projects from beginning to end, from concept development through competitive bidding, location scouting, through to budgeting and execution in both print and digital mediums, including producing rough sketches, conceptual design concepts and layout designs to communicate initial ideas and follows through on delivering flawless executions.

• Established & maintained asset management best practices.

 

 

Graphic Designer

San Francisco Zoo
January 2008 — January 2009, San Francisco, CA

• Designed event materials for ZooFest, Furball, Zootoberfest and others including: event branding and invitations, signage and environmental graphics. 

• Designed materials for membership, kids activities and camps, and zoo signage. 

• Socialized baby penguins.

 

 

Graphic Designer

Simayof Jewelers
July 2005 — September 2007, San Francisco, CA

• Lead corporate rebranding project from design concept through implementation in 10 stores locate across the United States. 

• Supported Marketing campaigns, and created and produced concepts for marketing campaigns; managed design and production guidelines. 

• Secured and managed creative design talent of 2 photographers and 2 retouch artists.

• Sourced and managed vendors for print, digital, signage, and industrial design.

 

 

Graphic Design Fellow

Chronicle Books
January 2005 — June 2005, San Francisco, CA 

• Won 6-month paid fellowship, with the in-house Gift Design Department.

• Design and Project Management of Gift Items including: Legacy of the Puppy, Hula Honeys, Bad Girl’s Guide, and more. 

• Production and Production support for internal team of 6 designers and 40+ design contractors.