Leadership & Design Values
Leadership Philosopy
Operational Excellence
At the foundation lies a commitment to serve:
For our Team Members, nurturing growth and enabling success.
For our Customers, delivering unwavering value and trust.
For our Organization, fostering resilience and innovation.
Continuous Improvement
I approach excellence both figuratively and literally:
Figuratively, with Precision, Surgical Execution, and Deliberate Action — ensuring we are sharp, strategic, and impactful.
Literally, by putting Human-Centered Design at the core, keeping Experience at Heart, tackling the Problem First, and focusing relentlessly on Business Value.
How we achieve this matters just as much:
Through Leadership Development and creating an Environment to Thrive, rooted in Equity and Inclusion.
By maintaining a Customer First, Always mindset.
And by cultivating a Progressive, Data-Driven, and Customer-Centric Culture.
By balancing Operational Excellence with Continuous Improvement, I design systems, cultures, and teams that don’t just perform — they thrive and evolve.
This is Excellence, by Design.
My leadership and design philosophy is anchored in the belief that Excellence is not accidental — it is by design. Every decision, every action, and every experience must be thoughtfully crafted to drive impact for individuals, teams, customers, and the organization as a whole.
Pixels, Purpose & PlayStations: My Design Philosophy
My design journey didn’t start in a fancy studio or an HCI lab—it started in the 80s, seated cross-legged in front of the warm, flickering glow of the television. The world streamed in: news, cartoons, cricket matches, grainy space documentaries… all rendered in glorious 480i.
Then one day, my Dad walks in carrying a strange, matte-finished artifact. It looked like a typewriter, if the typewriter had gone rogue and decided to throw a rave. The keys weren’t in any order I recognized—my seven-year-old self was convinced it was some kind of alien communication device. Turns out, it was my first PC. A box of magic.
When I saw what it could do, I was spellbound. Each pixel on that chunky CRT screen felt like it had purpose. Lines moved with intention. Colors blinked to life like they had something to say. Even the boot-up beep felt dramatic—like the drumroll before a symphony of code.
And then came games.
From simple text-based adventures where “Go North” meant everything, to the pixelated chaos of Nintendo’s 8-bit Mario saving the princess for the 47th time, to Sonic the Hedgehog blurring across my screen in 16-bit fury—this was design. Not just art. Not just tech. It was interactive storytelling. It was empathy dressed as gameplay. And it hit me:
Video games weren’t just the future—they were humanity’s most visceral form of storytelling yet.
As the years rolled on, the design bug mutated into something deeper. I wasn’t just obsessed with what was on the screen—I was seeing design everywhere: in buildings, in bridges, in flip phones and Palm Pilots, in iPods that clicked and watches that glowed. I saw design in things that worked and in things that gloriously didn’t. I saw intention. Sometimes misdirected, sometimes brilliant.
That’s when I realized something profound: Design is not just about making things beautiful.
It’s about making things understandable.
This understanding nudged me towards empathy. Because to design something truly intuitive, you need to know your user—not just demographically, but emotionally. What are they afraid of? What do they want to do? What are they secretly hoping for that they haven’t even articulated yet?
And that’s when this quote hit me like a lightsaber to the brain:
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
– Jedi Master Yoda
I started seeing how bad design breeds fear. The fear of clicking the wrong button. The fear of breaking something. The fear of looking stupid. And fear? It creates friction. Friction leads to frustration. Frustration leads to churn, to failure, to suffering (ask any UX researcher about their app’s drop-off rate and watch their eyes glaze over).
So my design philosophy crystallized over the years into three core pillars:
Clarity
Design should immediately answer: “What am I looking at, and what can I do with it?”
Design should empower the user. Not impress them with cleverness.
Design is ultimately about getting people from where they are to where they want to be.
Action
Outcomes
From DOS prompts to ChatGPT, from Palm OS to spatial computing, I’ve seen and lived through every design trend. I’ve worked through UIs that were “really really bad & really really good!!” (shout out to Symbian), and now I watch in awe as AI, ML, AR, and VR reshape what interaction even means.
But the soul of good design? That hasn’t changed.
Design is the bridge between confusion and clarity.
It’s the magic that makes people feel understood, not overwhelmed.
And that’s why I do what I do.
Because every great design begins with a pixel. And that pixel still has purpose.
...and the fine doodles are courtesy of my now 12 year old, when she was 5.