Philosophy
Design Leadership
Great design leadership starts with knowing where you're going, why it matters, and repeating it until everyone else does too. I lead with clarity and conviction, care deeply about the people we design for, the craft, and the team doing the work. I believe my job is to create the conditions for great work to happen, not to have all the answers.
I'm drawn to complex systems and the challenge of making them feel simple and coherent, especially products that help people achieve their goals in their life. In a world where building is cheap but craft is rare, great design is a genuine differentiator.
Experience
Head of UX, YouTube Studio
Leading a global team of 30+ designers, researchers, visual designers, and content designers through a transformation of YouTube Studio. Identified the need to pivot the product from a generic container of features into a true creative partner, reorganized the team around that vision, and architected a multi-year roadmap including a complete overhaul of the app's information architecture.
The vision and systems we built unlocked significantly faster execution across 40 partner teams. Now leading the team through a major AI transformation with Ask Studio.
- 100M+ creators served
- 2× growth in mobile usage
- 10% YoY increase in uploads
- 20% YoY growth in weekly active channels
Senior Staff UX Designer, YouTube Studio
Landed a complex multi-year migration from Studio Classic to the new YouTube Studio covering hundreds of features, a decade of technical and design debt, and a creator base that couldn't afford disruption. We transformed the mobile experience to support the next generation of creators.
Then built the platform foundations: design system, documentation, resources, and partner support, giving teams across YouTube shared language and scaffolding to move with confidence.
Senior UX Designer, Inbox + Gmail
Relocated to Zurich to lead the EMEA-based UX team, gaining a global perspective. Drove the Gmail add-ons platform, enabling hundreds of third-party developers to build powerful integrations into one of the world's most-used productivity tools.
Built a scalable, cross platform design system that covered web, iOS, and Android. Closed this chapter with an exploratory vision for an AI-powered assistive layer in the workplace, much of which is becoming reality today.
UX Designer, Google Play Music
Expanded from feature work to holistic product thinking across web, Android, and iOS. Led the Songza acquisition integration, drove a complete Material Design refresh, and delivered on key business and growth goals: a free ad-supported tier, family plans, and a podcast experience. Closed this chapter managing a cross-functional team of 7.
UX Intern, Google Play Music
Pushed beyond what was possible, designing a seamless way to upload your entire music library to the cloud and take it anywhere at a time when building rich web experiences was genuinely hard.
Interaction Designer, Shopping.com
Grew from learning the craft to shaping product direction. Worked across the full product development lifecycle, from research and ideation to design and final spec. Defined a 5-year vision reimagining comparison shopping as a premium, near-native experience and led the Product Page redesign as its first real expression.
fMRI Research Assistant, Stanford
Research assistant studying how future self perception shapes decision-making in the present, showing an early passion for helping people make better decisions.
- Ersner-Hershfield, H., Garton, M. T., Ballard, K., Samanez-Larkin, G. R., & Knutson, B. (2009). Don't stop thinking about tomorrow: Individual differences in future self-continuity account for saving. Judgment and Decision Making, 4(4), 280–286.
- Ersner-Hershfield, H., Wimmer, G. E., & Knutson, B. (2009). Neural evidence for self-continuity in temporal discounting. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 4(1), 85–92.
Education
UC Berkeley School of Information
Focus on behavior change, decision-making, and applying behavioral economics to design problems to help people make better decisions through technology.
Stanford University
Focus on user-centered design including design thinking, qualitative research, interaction and visual design, rapid prototyping, and usability testing.