For thirty years, I’ve built and led design organizations that turn user experience into a business lever, at companies ranging from early-internet startups to Fortune 500s. I don’t just design products. I design the teams and systems that make great design repeatable at scale.
Design leadership, in practice.
Mature design leadership is four roles in constant motion: the visionary who sees where an industry is headed, the orchestrator who builds coherence across systems never designed to fit together, the translator who moves fluently between design, business, and engineering, and the change agent who makes new ways of thinking actually stick.
CURRENTLY
As Chief Design Officer at Bentley Systems, I lead a federated Design organization across the business, shaping how thousands of daily users worldwide design, build, and operate better, more resilient infrastructure.
WHO IS BENTLEY?
Bentley Systems (Nasdaq: BSY) is the infrastructure engineering software company. We provide innovative software to advance the world’s infrastructure, sustaining the global economy and environment. Our industry-leading software solutions are used by professionals and organizations of every size, for the design, construction, and operations of roads and bridges, rail and transit, water and wastewater, public works and utilities, buildings and campuses, mining, and industrial facilities.
Our offerings include MicroStation-based applications for modelling and simulation, ProjectWise for project delivery, AssetWise for asset and network performance, Seequent’s leading geosciences software portfolio, and the iTwin platform for infrastructure digital twins. Bentley Systems employs more than 5,500 colleagues and generates annual revenues of approximately $1.3 billion in 194 countries.
I’m also a Council Member on the Design Executive Council.
Design Executive Council is the premier membership network of the world’s foremost design executives. Our members are the Heads of Design, VPs, SVPs, Chief Design Officers, and Board Members of the world’s most significant public companies and ventures. Through DXC, we drive each other to new heights, develop competitive advantages, and elevate strategic design leadership to the highest levels.
PREVIOUSLY
Previously, I was Acting Chief Customer Officer and Director, Experience Design at Seequent.
As Acting Chief Customer Officer and Director of Experience Design at Seequent, I helped shape the design and customer experience practice through the company’s $1.05B acquisition by Bentley Systems in 2021, work that positioned me for the CDO role I hold today.
Seequent’s vision and innovative approach to technology solutions for complex decision-making about some of the world’s most significant challenges are a unified focus of its people, customers, and partners worldwide.
Prior to Seequent, I was Sr. Director, Technical Operations at Dissolve.
As Sr. Director of Technical Operations at Dissolve, I led the technical and operational backbone behind a stock footage company whose work won 6 Vimeo Staff Picks and drew acclaim from Time Magazine, Mashable, BuzzFeed, Adweek, Fast Company, Advertising Age, Wired, and The AV Club.
Dissolve was renowned for inspirational video marketing that reached over 5 million organic views.
Prior to Dissolve, I was Director, Interaction and Design at Corbis.
As Director of Interaction and Design at Corbis, one of the world’s leading visual media providers, I worked at the intersection of commercial and editorial photography, illustration, and footage, including the Bettmann Archive, one of the most historically significant image collections in the world.
In 2007, Corbis (with Bill Gates) acquired Veer, where I’d go on to lead worldwide community.
Prior to our acquisition by Corbis (and Bill Gates), I was Co-founder and Director, Worldwide Community at Veer.
As Co-founder and Director of Worldwide Community, I helped build Veer into the first “love-mark” in the stock image industry, a brand millions of creatives associated with inspiration, delivered through catalogs, the web, conferences, and social media.
That work earned recognition from Communication Arts, the Type Directors Club, the Webby Awards, SXSW Web Awards, HOW Magazine (including a “Perfect 10” award), and the Direct Marketing Association’s ECHO award.
Veer’s culture was steeped in sharing ideas and stoking innovation through action in the field. I was honored to introduce Stefan Sagmeister in Buffalo, NY while taking that notion of collaborative connection to our global creative community.
Early experiences.
I started working on the internet during its early days. In 1994 I hired myself out to ISPs and Telecoms with a focus on interaction and UI design. My introduction to high-tech company life was at Image Club Graphics, the world’s first creative content aggregator on the web. Here, I met and mentored under famed typographer and digital interface pioneer Grant Hutchinson.
My early career took me to Adobe, where I developed products, honed an understanding of customer-led design, and helped build some of their earliest commerce sites. Then I moved to Verity/HP, where I focused on bringing simple, intuitive UX to broad, unstructured enterprise search. Eventually, I made my way back to Canada from California to start Veer with the folks who’d influenced the early days of my career.
Let’s do something great together, or get familiar with my history first.