DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT DESIGN
I build design organizations that hold up under pressure and ship work that moves the business.
I’ve led design in environments where the stakes were real: financial services, enterprise SaaS and consumer platforms where design decisions have direct consequences for revenue, adoption and trust. I’ve rebuilt platforms from the ground up, made the case for design system investment at the executive level and kept teams focused through conditions that would derail most organizations.
If that’s the kind of leadership your team needs right now, let’s talk.
Recent roles
Head of Experience Design, Webster Bank
Open to Director, Senior Director, Head of UX and VP of Design roles, remote or hybrid.
20+
Years in design leadership
$18M
in Revenue generated
33
direct reports managed
$926K
Saved by cutting 28 tools to 7
How I Lead
Design is a business lever, not just a craft.
My leadership philosophy
Make the case, then make the thing.
Design without business grounding is decoration. I lead from strategy to execution.
Build teams that hold up under pressure.
High-craft, low-ego, clear on priorities, especially when the org is in flux.
Treat infrastructure as strategy.
Treat infrastructure as strategy. Design systems, governance and operations are how design scales.
Stay close to the work.
I coach, I review, I push back. Altitude is useful but never an excuse to lose touch with craft.
I’ve led teams through turnarounds and private equity ownership changes. Eleven rounds of layoffs. Teams that held together anyway.
Recommendations
What colleagues, clients and collaborators have said about working with me.
River Brandon
VP of Product & Design – Pluralsight
I reported directly to River
“A calm and steady presence in an environment undergoing constant change and disruption.”
Brad Bice
Principal Product Designer, Design System — Pluralsight
Reported to me directly
“I originally joined Pluralsight because of the quick connection I made with Tim, choosing his team over offers from Paramount+ and others.”
Caroline Buchele
Director, People Business Partner – Pluralsight
My People Business Partner at Pluralsight
“That integrity in hard moments is exactly what makes him the kind of leader people want to work for.”
Director of Product Design, Pluralsight
- Authored a solo executive briefing and presented the case for Pando as core product infrastructure to the CPO and senior leadership
- Partnered with the head of engineering and EPMO to assess migration scope across 60+ codebases and formalize a cross-functional adoption strategy
- Secured dedicated, experienced engineering leadership for Pando for the first time, including a principal engineer from enterprise architecture
- Made the infrastructure investment argument in business language, resulting in an org-wide mandate for all new product development and integration into agentic engineering workflows
Director of Product Design, Pluralsight
- Inherited a design org with no infrastructure, no shared process and 28 ungoverned tools, and built the operational foundation from scratch
- Consolidated tooling from 28 tools to a governed stack of 7, eliminating $926K in documented annual costs
- Built intake, escalation and alignment processes that held through eight rounds of layoffs and repeated reorgs
- Executed a three-day distributed team onsite that drove peer connection scores from 3.46 to 4.54 and collaboration desire from 4.15 to 4.77
Director of Product Design, Pluralsight
- Replaced a bloated, broken legacy system with a scalable, developer-friendly design system built for speed and trust.
- Reduced 60+ packages to 4 lightweight, zero-dependency modules
- Embedded theming, flexibility, and change safety by design
- Drove adoption through proactive support, office hours, and hands-on enablement
Director of Product Design, Pluralsight
- Led through private equity complexity to unify design, rebuild culture, and deliver a scalable design system.
- Advocated for and helped establish the company’s centralized design org
- Launched the Pando Design System to solve fragmentation, inflexibility, and developer friction
- Reduced time-to-design by 40% and positioned design as a strategic partner across the business
Head of Experience Design, Webster Bank
- Led a full-scale redesign of WebsterBank.com transforming not just the site, but the organization behind it.
- Reframed a surface-level redesign into a strategic enterprise initiative
- Created the bank’s first design system and rebuilt IA, content, and UX from the ground up
- Unified 60+ stakeholders
- Drove 600% increase in application starts
Head of Experience Design, Webster Bank
- Reframed the bank’s digital experience around customer life moments instead of internal product categories
- Designed a persona-plus-life-moment routing tool connecting visitors to curated, relevant content based on who they are and what they’re focused on right now
- Built the content taxonomy, information architecture and destination pages across dozens of persona and life-moment combinations
- Overcame significant organizational resistance by making the case that the bank’s org chart was never the customer’s problem to solve
Head of Experience Design, Webster Bank
- Recognized untapped social proof value in brand-owned TV testimonial content sitting on an external microsite
- Convinced brand to redirect the microsite to the main bank website and built the landing experience and individual story pages from scratch
- Created the content framework (Client Background, The Moment, The Response, The Results) that structured nine wildly different business stories into a consistent, engaging format
- Connected each story directly to relevant bank products, turning trust-building content into a soft-sell purchase funnel
Head of Experience Design, Webster Bank
- Replaced a rigid, feature-driven roadmap with a flexible, outcomes-first approach rooted in research and real value.
- Created a living roadmap aligned to business goals, user needs, and confidence levels
- Influenced executive leadership to shift funding, process, and mindset
- Selected by Nielsen Norman Group as a model for UX roadmap strategy
Head of Experience Design, Webster Bank
- Transformed a fractured digital ecosystem into a scalable, governed design system.
- Diagnosed systemic UX debt across properties and secured $1.25MM in funding
- Built and led Webster’s first Experience Design team and governance council
- Delivered a proof-of-concept design system rooted in Atomic Design principles
Head of Experience Design, Webster Bank
- Led end-to-end digital transformation across consumer and business banking.
- Modernized the mobile account opening experience to reduce friction and boost conversion
- Embedded Lean UX and cross-functional collaboration inside a conservative, compliance-driven org
- Built the bank’s first centralized UX function, scaling in-house design and reducing agency dependency
Chief Creative Officer, Crucial Networking
- Digitized a $100M food distributor’s manual ordering process, driving $2.5MM in new online revenue.
- Designed and launched a custom e-commerce platform for thousands of B2B customers
- Reduced friction, errors, and fulfillment issues through real-time order integration
- Increased average order value by exposing customers to the full product catalog
Chief Creative Officer, Crucial Networking
For a private therapeutic yoga studio in a crowded market, more traffic wasn’t the answer; better traffic was. By defining the ideal client, refining the message, and building a conversion-focused website, I turned a struggling local business into a fully booked practice, eliminating all paid advertising in the process.
Chief Creative Officer, Crucial Networking
- A curated collection spanning web, branding, photography, and album art—crafted for clients ranging from Grammy-winning musicians to aerospace and energy brands.
- Delivered discovery, design, development & web strategy for businesses
- Produced album art, branding, and concert photography for artists like Grammy winner Brandi Carlile, Grammy winner Mike Farris and multi-platinum selling Candlebox
- Executed photography-rich campaigns blending content, strategy and visual storytelling