About
I’m a self diagnosed sufferer of Creative ADD. I am constantly looking for new ways to feed my addiction—from drawing to digital sculpting, UI design to motion graphics, or even song writing to film scoring—if it involves creating, sign-me up! This insatiable thirst for self expression has served me well! When it comes to leading other creatives, my experience and familiarity with a wide variety of disciplines has helped me relate with these specialists and provide meaningful feedback that results in exceptional output!
With regards to my approach to people-management—I lead from the front! While I know my core responsibility is to enable my team to do their best work—removing obstacles along the way—I find that sharing in the workload of creative tasks helps keep me sharp and inspires my team to do their best work! Constantly learning from one another!
I am a fierce optimist! When presented with a challenge, I am usually the first to say “yes, we can!”. I then work with my team to come up with solutions. Those solutions are presented to the stakeholders along with the associated tradeoffs. In most cases we end up taking an iterative approach—delivering an MVP(or better) in record time and then refining over the following days, weeks or months while juggling several other projects simultaneously.
Work Experience
Head of Creative
2018 - Present
I implemented the in-house agency model—repairing the Creative team’s reputation across the org. by creating a Creative Brief intake-form, and streamlining creative processes resulting in top-tier service and quality.
Launched Weekly Infographic Thought Leadership Series (Email, article, infographic) Opened doors that were previously closed. This initiative was directly responsible for our Central Bank of Hawaii multi-million dollar deal.
Helped launch Digital Banking Week virtual event(“Shark Week of Banking”) my team produced the day-of video presentations/overall-experience and provided creative support for everything from Powerpoint presentations & promotional ads, to the online video portal & animated video segments.
Oversaw growth of Creative team from 5 to 12 people.
Helped launch our Money Experience Summit event at Snowbird. MX’s first user-conference with 500+ in-person high-value prospects & customers. With another 1200+ joining virtually. I oversaw all creative—venue design, video/motion graphics, promotional spots, swag, and so much more! Our biggest pipeline/revenue generating activity to date!
All the time focusing on building brand awareness/sentiment, and driving pipeline. Directly influencing MX’s unprecedented growth!
Creative Director
2007 - 2018
I joined Sibling Systems(re-branded to Flagship in 2011), a small 3 person software startup as the first in-house creative. I was key in bootstrapping our growth from 3 people to 30+ and $300K/yr of revenue in 2007 to $5M in 2013. My hustle and guerrilla-marketing efforts took the company from local(family & friends projects) to the international stage with Genentech/Roche. Where our initial character design project ”the Google Squad”—used to help build adoption of Google tools within Gententech’s org. led to our relationship as an agency of record for internal campaigns, iOS app design/development, and R&D incubator projects.
We were recommended to, and did work with dozens of amazing brands—a few of those are listed below.
Designer
2005 - 2007
I joined Forthgear as a junior designer after a failed attempt at freelancing for a year. With gratitude for a steady paycheck and the drive to provide for a young family, I was driven to make a mark. I quickly rose from a junior designer focused on web design/dev to part of the mid-level management team which oversaw all of the interactive work being done at Forthgear. I reported directly to one of the 2 partners and lead a team of 4.
Due to ridiculously tight budgets and timelines I learned to work extremely fast! Which has surprised & delighted my clients, and employers alike ever since.