I'm an author, speaker, and consultant in the fields of user experience, startup strategy, and career development for women, especially in technical fields. I consider myself an unabashed practial-ist when about helping teams create digital products that people actually like and want to use. I started at Amazon as a UX leader, went on to a nutty and busy consulting career with dozens of companies (many super-early-stage startups) and giant organizations. I am utterly convinced that 'Corporate Underpants' (internal politics that show through in your products) are a much bigger problem than existing processes can solve, and that focusing on executive and stakeholder alignment is the key.

I believe that, to become senior and leaders in the world of digital products, product and ux people have to become masters of managing up, wrangling politics, and embracing assumptions before they gather data. I have my own process to help with this, which I call Align Before Design. It's a workshop that anyone can run and it helps align executives in five conversations, resulting in a 'magical sentence' that sets and maintains clear focus throughout any product design and development process. I'm also a founding volunteer of Never Search Alone, which is a free process that is like "AA for job seekers." It's based on a book of that name by Phyl Terry and describes how job seekers should create Job Search Councils and follow a prescribed set of exercises to co-mentor each other through the otherwise horrible experience of job seeking.

I'm also a mentor and coach to women in tech and help them understand how and why to stand strong as they approach their career development, titles, and salaries. In my consulting work, I have worked with established companies from Apple to Zillow, financial institutions of all sizes, dozens of startups, and international organizations like the United Nations. I specialize in early stage startup and disruptive innovation teams. I'm also a mentor and coach to women in tech and help them understand how and why to stand strong as they approach their career development, titles, and salaries. I am the co-author of the Persona Lifecycle books and am currently working on my third book Align Before Design.

I am the host of the Corporate Underpants podcast and of the Never Search Alone Linkedin Live events. Before launching my own business, I was a User Experience Lead at Amazon. I have a Master’s Degree in Human Centered Design and Engineering from the University of Washington.

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