Design Leadership and Experience Strategy
Shaping direction, clarifying priorities, and connecting design decisions to broader product and organizational goals.
Design and Accessibility Leadership • Team Enablement • Systems Thinking
Leading the systems behind better digital experiences
I am a design leader focused on UX strategy, systems thinking, team enablement, and accessibility-informed quality.
My Focus
Team Enablement
Creating guidance, training, workflows, and shared systems that help teams work with more confidence and consistency.
Design Systems and Operational Clarity
Improving how teams collaborate, communicate, document, review, and scale digital work across organizations.
Accessibility and Quality
Embedding accessibility and inclusive design into the systems that support better, more durable experiences.
Areas of Impact
70+ Designers Supported
Provided design leadership, accessibility guidance, training, mentorship, and enablement resources across enterprise UX teams.
Design and Governance Leadership
Established scalable practices, governance processes, and review workflows across multiple product teams.
Quality Built Into Workflows
Integrated accessibility standards, design reviews, documentation, and quality checkpoints into everyday design workflows.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Partnered with design, product, engineering, and business stakeholders to improve delivery quality and team alignment.
Higher Education and Enterprise Experience
Led digital experience, accessibility, training, and operational initiatives across both higher education and enterprise organizations.
Improving the Systems Behind the Work
The biggest challenges organizations face are rarely caused by a lack of talent.
More often, teams struggle because knowledge is difficult to find, processes are inconsistent, accessibility is addressed too late, or collaboration breaks down across functions.
My work focuses on creating the systems, guidance, and operational structures that help teams move faster, make better decisions, and deliver higher-quality experiences.
This work often includes:
- Design leadership and experience strategy
- Training and capability building
- Governance and review frameworks
- Design and UX operations
- Cross-functional alignment
- Accessibility and inclusive design as a built-in quality standard
- AI-assisted quality and review workflows
The best systems often feel invisible when they work well.
That is the kind of work I love building.
Selected Work
Examples of design leadership, systems thinking, team enablement, and accessibility-informed work built to improve quality and help teams work more effectively.
Featured Work
- Building Accessibility Capability at Scale
- University-Wide Design System, Prototypes, and Web Components
- ACES Program Explorer
- AI-Assisted UX Governance Concepts
- Operational Enablement and Team Training
- Accessibility Governance and Design Quality Systems
About Melissa
I started my career in graphic design, where I learned how thoughtful communication and visual clarity can shape people’s experiences.
Over time, my work expanded beyond designing interfaces into leading the systems behind them. Today, I focus on helping organizations strengthen design quality, improve collaboration, build team capability, and create more sustainable ways of working.
Accessibility is a major strength in that work, but I do not see it as the whole story. Whether I am developing training programs, creating governance frameworks, mentoring designers, or improving operational processes, I am motivated by the same goal: helping people do their best work and creating better experiences for the people they serve.
Resume
View experience, leadership work, certifications, and professional background.