Skip to content

About

I've scaled design organizations from 1 to 40 across companies supporting 200+ engineers. Two decades in enterprise and SaaS, long enough to know that most design problems are actually systems problems wearing a UI costume.

Career journey

  1. Sep 2025 – Present

    CTO

    Assembli

    Shipped chat tools that doubled active users in two months. Building a generative UI framework on MCP agent standards, plus the full dev infrastructure and Material v3 design system, from scratch.

    Doubled active users in 2 months, architecting generative UI

    View case study →

  2. May 2023 – Oct 2025

    Co-founder, Product & Design Lead

    Legacy Logix

    Co-founder

    Turned an unprofitable product around by cutting operational costs 95% with an AI/LLM stack built from scratch. Compressed concept-to-MVP from months to 6 weeks and cut rework 3x.

    95% cost reduction via AI, concept-to-MVP in 6 weeks

    View case study →

  3. Mar 2020 – Present

    Co-founder

    Secular Omaha Home School Co-operative

    Co-founder

    Co-founded distributed learning organization serving 45+ families with 100+ children through consensus-driven governance.

    45+ families, 100+ children, consensus-driven

  4. Sep 2015 – May 2023

    Co-founder, Head of Product & Design

    Reva

    Co-founderAcquired

    Drove 30x ROI and a $300M market cap gain. Led 50+ people across four continents at 30% below industry burn rates. Rebuilt lead workflows with AI tooling: 400% conversion increase, 2–4x faster response times.

    30x ROI, $300M market cap gain, 400% lead conversion increase

    View case study →

  5. Aug 2014 – Sep 2015

    Director of UX

    Meltwater

    IPO

    Scaled the product org 17→35 in six months with 100% retention, supporting 200+ engineers. Architected the AI sentiment analysis pipeline processing 10–50 TB daily. Built the shared design language and cross-functional process that anchored the org through Meltwater's 2020 IPO.

    Scaled org 17→35, AI processing 10–50 TB/day

    View case study →

  6. Mar 2012 – Sep 2014

    Design Team Manager

    Kno

    Acquired

    Grew teams 3→15 across three continents supporting 60+ engineers. Added sentiment analysis, NLP summarization, and eye-tracking to the product while unifying design across seven platforms and shipping 300+ releases in 18 months.

    Grew team 3→15, unified 7 platforms, 300+ releases

  7. Feb 2012 – May 2012

    Principal Designer

    TrustedID

    Consulting

    Post-acquisition consulting: took Reppler's IP and built a prototype showing how it fit into TrustedID's product line.

  8. Jan 2011 – Mar 2012

    Principal Designer & Sr Product Manager

    HumanConcepts

    Acquired

    Returned as lead designer and PM to see the redesign through to ship. HumanConcepts was acquired by Saba in 2012.

  9. Jun 2010 – May 2011

    Principal Designer & Sr UI Engineer

    Reppler

    Co-founderAcquired

    Social reputation analysis scanning social media for sentiment, language, malware, and phishing. Shipped one of the first production AI analysis tools on social media in 2010. Built cross-network overlap analysis and a custom JavaScript MVC for a true SPA. Acquired by TrustedID in 2011.

    Early production AI on social media

  10. Oct 2009 – Jan 2010

    Principal Designer

    HumanConcepts

    Consulting

    Redesigned the flagship HR product: real-time org charts from Oracle and SAP ERPs with financial rollup, succession planning, and field-level security. Used by ~90% of Fortune 500. Combined multiple product lines into a single Silverlight experience.

    Redesigned product used by 90% of Fortune 500

  11. Jan 2009 – May 2010

    Co-founder / CEO

    Bumpr

    Co-founder

    Social network aggregation across Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Orkut, and more. A reply on Twitter showed up on Facebook, and you could reply from there too. Goal: break down the garden walls.

  12. Aug 2008 – Dec 2008

    Principal Designer

    Alight Planning

    Consulting

    Designed a budgeting tool used by all Fortune 50 companies. Covered businesses from small cap up.

  13. Apr 2008 – Jul 2008

    Principal Designer

    Plum Keeper

    Consulting

    Designed a social network for new parents. Quick capture of photos, videos, text, and audio via smartphones, shared with family as a digital scrapbook that could be ordered as a physical book.

  14. Jan 2008 – Apr 2010

    Co-founder / Head of Product

    1099reporter

    Co-founder

    Simplified 1099-MISC filing with a fire-and-forget approach: businesses enter data, system delivers digitally first then auto-sends physical copies via USPS if unacknowledged. Digitally filed with IRS on behalf of the business.

  15. Nov 2007 – May 2008

    Principal Designer

    Intuit (MyCorporation)

    Consulting

    Redesigned onboarding by state and incorporation type, added exit-intent email sequences at drop-off points, and instrumented the funnel for the first time.

  16. Oct 2007 – Mar 2008

    Principal Designer

    Autodesk (Homestyler)

    Consulting

    Brought professional BIM (Revit) to a consumer web app in 2007, before this existed anywhere. Built 2D plan and 3D isometric views, an appliance catalog with photorealistic rendering, and a proximity-detection system for flagging object conflicts. Eventually sold by Intel ~2012.

    Brought professional BIM to consumer web in 2007

  17. Nov 2006 – Sep 2007

    Staff Interaction Designer

    Intuit

    Designed core experiences for TurboTax Estimated Taxes, Home & Business, and Business product lines. Built a prototype for personal finance management that mapped almost exactly to what Mint shipped two years later. Led UX research and developed design systems for the new web-based products.

    Designed TurboTax experiences, prototyped a Mint precursor

  18. May 2006 – Nov 2006

    Senior Business Analyst

    Nelnet

    Third-tier support configuring, managing, and fixing Nelnet mainframe integration with thousands of financial and education institutions.

  19. Aug 2005 – Nov 2006

    Graduate Research Fellow (HCI)

    Creighton University

    Taught continuing education for adult computer literacy. Substitute taught undergrad courses in economics, finance, and organizational behavior. Assisted professors with research in economic and community development.

  20. Jun 2004 – May 2006

    MS IT Management (HCI) & MBA

    Creighton University

    Academic

  21. Apr 2003 – Aug 2005

    Computer Programmer Systems Analyst

    US Air Force (Active Duty)

    Built a medical deployment readiness system that earned the unit's best-ever basewide drill score. Co-developed a SACCS replacement proposal projected to save $800M over 10 years. Served as lead PM across 55th Wing and StratCom, completing 12+ projects.

    SACCS replacement proposal: est. $800M savings over 10 years

  22. Jan 2001 – Jan 2003

    Lead Computer Programmer

    Tulane University

    Built internal tools for the student employment department: automated record lookups, batch processing for end-of-semester reporting, and a scheduling interface that cut front-desk wait times.

  23. Aug 1999 – Dec 2002

    BS Finance with Computer Science

    Tulane University

    Academic

Beyond work

Outside of product and design, I spend time on philosophy, history, and science. I'm also a maker: 3D printing, CAD, and building things with my hands. Movies, literature, and music fill in the rest.

In 2020, my wife and I co-founded a secular homeschool co-operative in Omaha that now serves 45+ families and 100+ children. Coordinating volunteers, managing diverse stakeholders, designing governance that works by consensus. Turns out it's a lot like building a product team.

Resume

Full career history, condensed to two pages.

Download resume (PDF)

Let's Talk

Interested in working together? I'd love to hear about your project.

Get in touch