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Building design into a commercial advantage.

I scaled Veranex’s product design capability, repositioned UX around client outcomes, then moved upstream to unify marketing and strengthen how the company took its value to market.

My roles
Director of Product Design → Senior Director of Design, leading Marketing
Scope
Team building, client delivery, GTM strategy, and a $1M annual budget
Product design

Build the capability

Grew the team from 5 to 12 and established a shared operating model across the merged organization.

Marketing & GTM

Scale the story

Unified priorities, proposals, and market narratives around the value clients were trying to create.

Design organization
5 → 12Team members while maintaining delivery
Utilization
~80%Billable while the team scaled
Marketing performance
140%+Growth across leads and marketing ROI
Commercial influence
~$55MPipeline helped accelerate

The acquisitions added capability faster than the company could integrate it.

Veranex brought together strong teams across product development, but design practices, go-to-market priorities, and team cultures remained fragmented. The opportunity was not simply to add capacity. It was to make those capabilities operate and sell as one company.

CapabilitiesExpertise lived in separate teams.
Go-to-marketOfferings were described through services and hours.
CultureNewly merged groups lacked shared ways of working.
One commercial system Shared process. Shared story. Shared client value.
  • Central priorities
  • Outcome-led proposals
  • Consistent delivery

We sold UX around client outcomes, not staffing hours.

I changed how the team operated and how the company explained its work. The goal was to preserve strong delivery economics while making design’s contribution to client outcomes more visible.

  1. Reframe the offer

    Sell the result, not the hours.

    We shifted pitches and proposals away from staffing alone and toward the decisions, experiences, and business outcomes UX could help a client create.

  2. Scale deliberately

    Grow capacity without losing utilization.

    I expanded the design team from 5 to 12, introduced shared staffing and delivery practices, and maintained approximately 80% billable utilization through the transition.

  3. Build beyond yourself

    Install the next layer of leadership.

    I handed day-to-day management to a UX manager and continued contributing to product design while shifting my primary focus to marketing structure and commercial growth.

Approximately two years Director of Product Design

Build the team, operating model, and outcome-led client proposition.

Leadership handoff UX manager

Own the team’s day-to-day management and continue the system.

Approximately two years Senior Director of Design

Lead marketing and GTM while reporting to the Chief Commercial Officer.

I applied the same outcome-led approach to marketing.

Marketing needed to return to the fundamentals: understand the client’s ambition, tell a story around the value Veranex could create, and connect every campaign and proposal to the commercial priorities of the business.

Client goalWhat is the business trying to change?
Relevant expertiseWhich combination of expertise creates that value?
Pitch and proposalHow do they make the outcome tangible?
Delivery modelWhat can be delivered now and repeated later?
Veranex website presenting the company as an integrated innovation partner
One company story The public website redesign helped present an integrated offer and contributed to a 3× increase in traffic.

A client engagement made the value proposition concrete.

A leading biopharma company was preparing to bring a new treatment for major depressive disorder to market. It wanted a digital companion platform that could extend the launch with better support for patients and clinicians. Our team was still operating under the Worrell name at the time.

  1. Business opportunityCompanion platform for a new MDD treatment
  2. My contributionPitch, proposal, and technology landscape
  3. Team directionGuide UX research and product design
  4. Engagement resultWon the work and delivered the platform designs
  5. Implementation bridgeHigh-level plan for a development partner

The commercial lesson: UX was not positioned as polish around the treatment launch. It was presented as a way to extend the treatment’s value through the patient and clinician experience.

The team grew, delivery held, and marketing produced more demand.

These outcomes span two successive leadership mandates. The design metrics reflect the function I built; the growth metrics reflect the marketing and go-to-market organization I later led.

5 → 12

Design team

Expanded the product design capability across the merged organization.

~80%

Billable utilization

Maintained delivery performance while increasing team capacity.

3×

Website traffic

Growth following the redesign of the public company experience.

140%+

Leads and marketing ROI

Increase after rebuilding marketing priorities and execution.

~$55M

Influenced pipeline

Opportunities the unified marketing organization helped accelerate.

$1M

Annual budget

Resources directed across the marketing mandate.