Hi, I'm Sarah.
Leadership / Product Design / Strategy
I lead design for complex products, and build the teams and systems that keep them clear.
My work has ranged from clinical workflows and compliance software to consumer apps for global brands, and from designing individual screens to building design departments. I'm most at home where the users are experts, the rules are strict, and getting the details right matters.
How I work
Vision & Strategy
I translate ambiguous business problems into clear design direction. That means getting in the room with product and executive stakeholders early, asking the right questions, and building a shared vision that teams can actually execute against. I’ve done this across healthcare analytics, insurance, and enterprise SaaS, where the stakes are high and the user problems are genuinely hard. One of my projects began as a vision concept leadership asked me for. I took it in a different direction, and it became a new product line for the company.
Team Building & Leadership
I've built a design team from the ground up and I know what it takes to hire well, develop people, and create an environment where designers do their best work. I believe great leadership is mostly about removing friction: between teams, between design and engineering, and between what the business thinks it wants and what users actually need. Part of removing friction today means equipping designers with AI tools and establishing the workflows, handoff standards, and quality guardrails that let them move faster without sacrificing craft.
Systems that Scale
Design systems are only as good as the team's ability to use and evolve them. I build systems with adoption in mind: documented, accessible, and designed to flex as the product grows. At Quest Analytics, I established the standards that scaled across four product lines and became the foundation for how the company thinks about design consistency. Most recently, I brought that systems thinking to AI-assisted design, building a process that takes a product from prototype to front-end handoff in a single session.
Brands I've worked with
Healthcare, insurance, and enterprise software, for teams ranging from a startup to global agencies.
Leadership Philosophy
I build design organizations that outlast me.
1
Vision flows down, ownership flows up.
I start by understanding where the company is going and why. That context is what lets a team make good decisions without waiting for me. My job is to turn the vision into a design direction everyone can build from, then step back so the team can run with it.
2
Empowered teams make better products than managed ones.
I hire people I trust and give them real ownership of problems. I ask the team to do the thinking before the meeting, understand the trade-offs, and arrive with a recommendation rather than a menu. Iteration is how we get better. Indecision is how we get slower.
3
The user is always in the room.
However far a conversation drifts into requirements or technical constraints, I keep the team anchored to the person using the product. From watching clinicians work on-site to interviewing analysts at health plans, I've seen how differently people work toward the same goals. Designing for that flexibility is the only way to build something that works.