Hi, I’m Kate!

University of Phoenix

Senior UX Manager • 2024 - present

As a working manager, I split my time between building alongside product and engineering partners, guiding a team of five direct reports, and shaping the way design functions within the overall organization.

• Design leadership + collaboration
  Scaling UX beyond simple execution to user-centered strategies that balance business and customer needs. Cultivating product and engineering partnerships, ensuring the design team’s impact is known at the leadership level.
• Team ethos + climate
  Continuously working to create a safe and collaborative environment, ensuring designers on my team have what they need to do their best work.
• Design system
  Leading component- and pattern-building efforts, creating an ADA-compliant, reusable design system to improve consistency and efficiency across products.

Senior UX Designer • 2023 - 2024

As the design lead for the core authenticated experience product team, I improved site discovery and defined the vision and strategy for top visited pages.

• Navigation overhaul
  Simplified product navigation by globally implementing singular header and footer components, decreasing the total number by 8 and 6 components respectively. Users have shown median task completion rate of 80% since implementation.
• Homepage vision + strategy
  Developed a long-term approach for building a scalable homepage that breaks large amounts of personalized information into small, consumable parts.
• Student Profile lift + shift
  Designed a scalable space for student account and profile information to gradually migrate from an old cumbersome platform.

Simple Focus

Senior UX Designer • 2021 - 2023

At Simple Focus I was the lead designer for education-focused clients, including the Alliance for Early Success and the University of Phoenix—where I revamped the Faculty Portal, turning their existing manual process into a buildable shared framework that helps working instructors manage course timing and student needs.

I was also part of a team tasked with improving the American Home Shield contractor portal. Together, we interviewed real estate agents, contractors, and other staff to uncover automation opportunities and points of friction, then began making small iterative changes that ultimately increased daily product use by 23%.

Georgetown University

Senior Designer • 2017 - 2021
Designer • 2013 - 2017

As the solo designer at Georgetown University in Qatar, I owned the visual design and UX strategy for all internal and public facing products—from sixty-page websites to sixty-foot banners, and everything in between. In the years I spent at Georgetown’s campus in the Middle East, my biggest wins include guiding a team of agency designers and engineers to develop a functional, user-friendly CMS, and building a robust reusable component library used to curate personalized admissions web and email experiences.