Teams
I've managed large UX design and research teams of full-time staff and contractors. I have regularly pitched to senior management, including Jeff Bezos while I was at Amazon. I’ve built teams from scratch and revived teams that needed new leadership. I’ve mentored junior designers, and managed managers. My teams have consisted, at various times, of UX designers, visual designers, motion designers, usability researchers, writers, and project managers.
I require team members to have the ability to develop design solutions and give them the responsibility to execute them in a timely and thorough manner. That doesn't mean I'm hands-off, but rather provide team members only the amount of guidance and oversight they need for their skill levels and experience.
Recommendations
Ron reported directly to me as CEO of Traverse Networks, a unified communications startup, and quickly became a critical component of the business. The Traverse mobile app suite, which Ron designed, was a key reason Avaya acquired Traverse. In fact, with each new company I’ve started, I considered Ron a key hire, and if he wasn’t available full-time, I was happy to have his valuable contribution as a consultant/side project.
Ron’s extensive knowledge of product design and branding, coupled with his talent for ideation and strategic thinking, sets him apart from even the most elite professionals in the UX field. Ron has a unique gift of weaving often conflicting business agendas, numerical data, technology limitations and emotionally-based opinions and desires together to deliver highly effective, scalable, visually polished design/UX solutions that exceed objectives.
—Durk Stelter, CEO and entrepreneur
As my manager at Parsable, Ron was a very integral part of my growth as a product designer. He has a talent for not only supporting his design team, but also coaching individual designers on his team to be great design leaders and advocates. When I was hired, Ron helped improve the way I was estimating design work and communicating to key stakeholders on my team about aligning on product requirements. Within a few months, my communication skills within the product team improved significantly, and I felt confident in leading large-scale projects in a short period of time.
Ron always made time to meet with designers, and made sure our design team had a good culture of effective design critique and collaboration. He also wasn’t afraid to do design work when necessary to support the team. Any team would be lucky to have him as a design leader.
—Neha Neguru, Senior Product Designer at Chorus.ai
Ron is the best manager I’ve ever worked for. In fact, after he hired me at NetObjects, I’ve followed him to Amazon, Avaya, and Palm. His quality standards and work ethic are world-class; I’ve learned a lot from him over the years about UX design and managing people. Ron tirelessly does whatever it takes to create the best possible products for his customers. His passion for great design becomes an inspiration to his team, who he patiently pushes to learn and grow. Through it all, his supportive attitude and great sense of humor make working together a lot of fun!
—Adam Donkin, Product leader and executive coach
Team morale … was pretty low when Ron came on board as manager. He immediately began to implement much-needed structure and process in order to reduce the amount of churn and accumulating design debt the team was experiencing at the time. The resulting improvements in efficiency allowed him to allocate time for people to work on a future design vision for the entire Kindle platform. He grew the team, drawing form his extensive network within the design community, and helped us earn the respect and appreciation of our engineering and product management collaborators.
Through this collaboration, we created and delivered highly profitable, evolving Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite products that still serve as the gold standard for dedicated reading devices even today. Ron has a great sense of humor, and brings a light-hearted mood to any team he engages with. If the opportunity arose, I would definitely work with him again.
—James Rafferty, Senior Product Designer at Atlassian
Ron and I met after Avaya acquired Traverse Networks. At Avaya, Ron built and a led a product design team whose services were always coveted, and sometimes fought for. He and his team provided leadership in all aspects of the product lifecycle, from conception and market analysis, to product planning and testing, through development, and adoption.
Ron leads by example, and his abilities set a high bar. He is the first to give credit, and the last to lose patience. A keen understanding of people enables Ron to recognize and develop talent, manage large projects in the face of competing interests, and motivate everyone. He promotes free-thinking in an atmosphere of meritocracy, and inspires loyalty. It is this, more than anything else, that drives his staff to give their all. I would love to work for him again.
—Chad Hunter, User Experience Lead at Bottomline Technologies
