I'm DJ. Product Designer & Leader.
I've designed and led digital product solutions for companies such as USAA, San Antonio Spurs, and Meta. Most recently, solving the problem of impersonation and hacked account recovery as a Staff Product Designer at Instagram.
About
I've spent 17 years at the intersection of product strategy and user experience across startups, agencies, and enterprise orgs. That just means I've seen a few things and know how to be both an IC and a design leader. I lead through clarity. I push back with data. And I care deeply about the people using the things I make.
Download ResumeExperience
Led strategy and design for Instagram's Account Recovery and Remediation, helping users regain access to their accounts after being compromised. Also led design and strategy for Identity Safety to help protect users from being impersonated or scammed on Instagram and Threads, ensuring Instagram's design pov influenced Meta-wide strategies for the family of apps.
Interviewed an avg of 2-3 design candidates a week for all levels at all stages for 4 years, also being one of ~30 designers trained to conduct final live problem solving interviews. Mentored IC4 and IC5 designers internally while also giving interview training through Bridge Builders for candidates who were requested.
Co-led initiatives with Product Design Leadership around remote work at Instagram.
How to effectively design at scale and across a family of apps. Creating systems and frameworks for interventions that make it easy for teams to execute their own solutions. Also how scale can skew research in ways that can overstate design problems.
Contributed to product design across Facebook's social and community surfaces for Events. Worked closely with research and engineering to reimagine how people connect and share within groups online when everything shifted during COVID.
Designing for global problems like COVID and having to learn how users adapted their habits. Learning how this coincided with interpreting research and the importance of regional data. Also, designing for niche groups alongside large market groups and how the contrast needs careful attention to detail.
Designed digital services for government and civic technology clients. Led discovery, research, and design for public-facing products where accessibility and clarity were can't-fail requirements.
Designing for the public means designing for everyone and how keeping accessibility at the center of design can reduce any potential regulatory issues.
Led product design for a cloud-based insurance platform. Translated complex insurance workflows into clear, usable interfaces for both internal operations teams and external agents.
How to effectively design for systems that are a part of larger input systems.
Led the design practice at a San Antonio creative agency. Oversaw brand, digital, and product work for a range of regional and national clients. Mentored junior designers and helped establish a more structured UX process within an agency context.
How to essentially start an agency, build a team, and carry out a business strategy to bring a company into being competitive. This required learning on the fly and direct partnership with company owners to carry out a vision.
Designed digital experiences for USAA's financial and insurance products serving military members and their families. Worked across mobile and web on features that helped members manage money, file claims, and navigate major life events.
Designing for people under real financial and emotional stress taught me empathy as a professional discipline. Every frustrated user is a person. That framing never left me.
Designed internal web tools and digital communications for a U.S. Army installation. Supported a range of internal stakeholders with interface design, information architecture, and digital content production.
Working in an institutional environment with strict constraints taught me to find creative solutions inside tight boundaries.
Worked across digital marketing, fan engagement, and event promotion under tight deadlines tied to the game schedule and handled player interviews including loading content for the Spurs website. Co-led migration of Spurs.com from previous CMS to Drupal, partnering with the NBA.
How to work in an extremely fast paced and unpredictable industry as well as how to manage and work within a complex content management system like Drupal.
Teaching
Taught UX Design fundamentals to career-changers and early-stage designers. Covered research methods, interaction design, prototyping, and portfolio development.
Teaching forces you to articulate things you've been doing on instinct. I came out of every cohort a sharper designer because I had to explain the why behind every decision.
Taught Intro to Web Design, Design Foundations, and Web Design for Music Majors. Designed curriculum for Freshmen design students.
Teaching individuals who have no previous context of what they're studying, but have an eagerness to learn. And understanding how to simplify concepts with the goal of instilling confidence in a student to thrive in their career.
Education
How I Work
01
Before I open Figma, I listen. To the team, the users, and the constraints no one put in the brief.
02
The asked-for solution is rarely the right one. I spend the time to find what actually needs solving.
03
No big reveals. Work is shared early and often — messy drafts included. Feedback shouldn't be a ceremony.
04
Perfection is a myth. I advocate for getting real signal from real users, then iterating with purpose.
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