What the title says
UX Program Manager, Brand · Dow Jones
No Senior, Lead or Director. Program titles in my brand division carry no level, so mine does not either.
Director, Project Management, Design Operations · Capital One EPS.xd
I bring order to design work, and build the AI tools that keep it there.
Thirteen-plus years running design and digital programs, in agencies, for enterprise clients and in-house. Today I am the sole UX Program Manager for the Brand function at Dow Jones, and I lead it: intake, capacity, standards and reporting for design work across content design, UX/UI, motion and video. In eight months I built the AI intake that reads six teams’ plans in whatever shape they arrive, led the design system now on six of eight properties, and built the views I plan from.
13+Years running design and digital programs
6Teams whose plans my AI intake reads, each in its own format
6 of 8Properties on the design system I lead
80%About that much less build time per property on it
The title
UX Program Manager, with no level in it. Here is what the job is.
Your posting is a Director role, so the title on my résumé needs a clear answer.
What the role is
The only program manager in the Brand function, and its lead
I run intake, capacity, standards, reporting and cadence for design work spanning content design, UX/UI, motion and some video, and I own the brand marketing team’s Asana implementation. Six teams’ plans run through the AI intake I built.
What came before
Nine years of Senior and Director titles before this one
From 2017 to 2026: Senior Digital Project Manager at Vertic, Senior Project Manager at Huge, and Director of Creative Operations at Everyrealm, where I built the creative production function and its team from zero, then Senior Program and Project Management on contract.
What the title does not answer, the operating model and the audit do. People management is the audit’s first row, scored Partial.
The operating model · your posting, line by line
Six lines of your posting, built into one operating model.
Each stage opens with a line from your posting. Step through them and the model on the right fills in: what I would put in place, what exists when the stage is done, and where I have done it before. The organization in the model is illustrative. No Capital One work, data or structure is depicted.
This walkthrough steps interactively with JavaScript on. Without it, all six stages are shown in order below, and the model shows its final state.
Your posting: “Responsible for developing operational strategy to address complex business challenges associated with a large, growing, design organization.”
Start with where the work comes from, not with a framework.
The first month is listening and mapping: every path by which work reaches designers, who decides what gets done, how much capacity actually exists, and where the standards break. A growing design organization usually has several front doors and no shared picture of demand. The strategy that comes out of it fits in one sentence, and every later stage hangs off it.
Where I have done it. The Brand function at Dow Jones now runs on one intake I built: six teams’ plans are read from what they already send, and the plan is built from them. At Everyrealm there was no function at all, and I built creative production from zero. Both were smaller than a design organization of this size, and the audit says so.
Your posting: “Develop and manage … design program managers, operations professionals, designers, and project resources within the design organization …”
A team shaped like the work: portfolio, standards, operations.
Design program managers aligned to portfolio areas, so each part of the organization has one person who knows its demand. An operations lead for the tools, the intake and the reporting, so nobody rebuilds a spreadsheet. A standards and practice owner working with the design leads. Weekly one-to-ones, a growth plan per person, and one shared portfolio review where the team sees the whole picture rather than its own piece. In the first ninety days I would bring you a role definition and career path for design program managers, and a hiring plan ordered by the capacity gaps the portfolio view shows.
Where I have done it. At Everyrealm I sourced, staffed and managed the creative team myself for about a year: 3D artists, UI/UX, motion and visual designers. At Huge I was pod lead on the Android pod, where the reporting structure was different, and I have led teams of designers and contractors on agency and contract work since. Leading managers would be new to me. One year of formal direct reports against the three your posting asks for; the audit scores it Partial.
Your posting: “Accountable for adherence to and evolution of design standards and practice management, as well as delivery principles and processes.”
Standards checked at intake and in critique, not at launch.
A standard nobody checks until launch is a suggestion. The standards travel with the work: attached when a request enters, reviewed in critique, and changed through a visible path when a team finds one that no longer fits. Delivery principles get the same treatment: a definition of ready for design, and a definition of done that engineering agrees with.
Event properties · design system
6 of 8Build time per property: about 80% less.
Where I have done it. I lead the design system unifying the event-site builds at Dow Jones: six of eight core properties migrated, build time down about eighty percent, cross-property inconsistencies gone. At Vertic, a research phase and a design phase for Arizona Public Service produced a design system that went into production with Infosys and twenty-eight-plus engineers.
Your posting: “Craft and execute operational strategy (i.e. allocation, resourcing, prioritization) to drive experience outcomes.”
Capacity is computed, and every priority comes with a reason.
Allocation starts from real capacity: who is on which team, their time off, their standing meetings, and the work already committed. Priority is argued on value, urgency and risk to the experience, and the reason is written down so it can be challenged. Decisions made in the weekly allocation meeting update the plan in the room, instead of someone updating it afterwards.
Where I have done it. The resourcing tool I built does exactly this for my own planning: a decision made in the meeting is staged for a one-click yes, and capacity recomputes itself. It is in the tools section.
Your posting: “Using best practices, bring order to complex programs, monitor and maintain the organization’s portfolio(s), and drive large bodies of design work forward.”
One portfolio view, read the same way by design, product and tech.
Every body of design work in one place: its stage, its owner, its capacity cost, its dependencies on product and engineering, and its top risk with an owner and a review date. The same view feeds a monthly readout for design leadership and the product and tech Chief of Staff offices, so the portfolio is never a separate deck someone has to assemble.
Where I have done it. At Huge, the design and development updates to tv.google, android.com through the Android 12 launch and wearos.google.com, delivered against Google’s launch calendar. At Dow Jones, about eight events and six launches in my first five months, each a fixed-date go-live, tracked in the Asana implementation I own.
Your posting: “Develop and manage key metrics on impact of design and the health of experience teams, proactively identifying and solving for any gaps.”
Two sets of numbers: what design changed, and how the teams are holding up.
Impact of design, measured where design moves something: build time, adoption of shared components, and the experience measures each product already owns. Health of teams, measured before it turns into attrition: load against capacity, unplanned work, and how long a request waits for a designer. A gap gets named in the readout with an owner, not discovered in an exit interview.
Where I have done it. Build time on the design system is a number I track, and migration decisions were made on views I built myself. The capacity views show load and what is slipping before it slips. What I have not built is an organization-wide measurement framework; the audit scores it Partial.
The organization, its numbers and its gap are illustrative, written to make the mechanism legible. No Capital One work is depicted. The stages are your posting’s own lines; the receipts under each are mine.
The tools · operations I improved with AI
Four tools I built to run my own program.
I am not an engineer. For more than thirteen years I have defined the requirements and use cases that feed into design and engineering, and worked alongside both. Today I work with engineers and designers on some projects, and on others I direct AI to build the tools I need end to end, so my operation and my programs run more efficiently and move faster.
That is the edge, and it is not the code. It is thirteen years of writing the requirements engineers and designers build from, working beside them while they build, and interfacing with enterprise clients and executive stakeholders throughout. Now I also know what AI can take off a program and where to stop: the model proposes, a person decides, every decision carries its reason. Engineers and designers build the things that matter. I make sure the program is ready for them.
Who does what
I do
- Define the requirement and the use case
- Interface with enterprise clients, business units and executive stakeholders
- Decide what a commitment is and what a priority is
- Set whether the model proposes or decides, and keep the override
Engineers and designers do
- Build what the business runs on, at scale
- Set the craft standard and hold the work to it
- Work with me on the projects that need them, which is most of them
The model does
- Read six formats into one record
- Flag what it cannot support instead of guessing
- Add up capacity and stage a change for a yes
- Write the reason beside every decision
Intake · read, not re-typed
In the pipelineA gap is chased, never guessed.
Intake · in weekly use
Relay
The problem. Six teams, six spreadsheet formats, one person re-typing all of it into a plan every quarter.
What it does. Relay reads what the teams already send, chases the fields nobody filled in, and returns one prioritized plan with names and weeks against every item, pushed into Asana through the API. Every item carries a reason and a capacity cost. One user, me, weekly. It has not been hardened for a team.
Where the human stays. The final priority call and the override. The model can allocate against the capacity it can see and, when I allow it, decide; whether it proposes or decides is a setting I control, and every decision carries its reason.
The resourcing meeting
In the roomThe meeting updates the plan.
Capacity · built, in weekly use
The resourcing tool
The problem. The resourcing meeting made decisions out loud that someone re-entered afterwards, and the over-capacity week showed up after the work was promised.
What it does. A decision made in the meeting is captured as it happens and staged for a one-click yes, so nothing changes unless a human confirms it. Once confirmed, the capacity view and the plan of record update themselves. Capacity is computed, not assumed: the tool adds up who is free and for how many hours; nobody guesses.
Where the human stays. The yes, by default. Switched on, it allocates within the capacity it can see and records why, and I can reverse any of it. Built for my own planning and used only by me; not deployed across my employer.
Brand team · next six weeks
Updated MondayThe shape shows up before the complaint.
Reporting · built for my own decisions
The data views
The problem. The numbers a design program needs (capacity, throughput, what is slipping) live in a work-management tool that reports on tasks, not on decisions.
What it does. Tools I built to visualize the data I already had, so a problem shows up as a shape before it shows up as a complaint.
Where the human stays. The reading. The view finds the shape; I decide what it means and what changes.
Said in the room, kept on record
Vendor callOnly what was agreed gets recorded.
Agreements · built
The agreements system
The problem. Hiring, vendor scoping and partnership conversations make commitments before anything is signed, and nobody keeps a record of them.
What it does. Turns the outcome of a negotiation into a record of specific commitments without inventing ones that were not made.
Where the human stays. What counts as a commitment. The system records; the people agree.
Governance I designed · on my own time
Outside the day job I have defined and launched a few small products end to end, and I run a set of AI agents that do their research, growth and build work, from an operations panel I built myself. The part that matters here is the governance. An agent must cite a commit, a file or a date, or write “no change.” Every recommendation carries a kill gate and a falsifier. Tasks marked for me only are refused by design, and a “Needs me” view surfaces only what needs a human. It is proof of launch, not a second job.
Operations panel · today
4 runsCite a source, or say “no change.”
The point of building them is not the building. What stopped costing my week is intake triage, capacity math, chasing incomplete briefs and status reporting. The hours now land on standards, staffing, the partners and the calls that need judgment. That is why the role covers more ground than the headcount suggests. I build these to make the program run, not to leave program management. Names, dates and figures in the mockups are illustrative.
How the three AI tools are built
| Layer | Relay, the intake | The resourcing tool | The agreements system |
|---|---|---|---|
| The model’s job, and its limits | Read a request, a team, a soft date and an open question out of one line of prose, and say which of those it is unsure of. A field it cannot support stays empty and is flagged, never guessed. | Turn a spoken decision into a structured change with a capacity cost. Allocate within the capacity it can see when allowed; otherwise stage the change for a yes. | Record the specific commitments that were made without inventing ones that were not. |
| The pipeline | Six stages in code: ingest, extract, normalize, resolve, rank, emit. Each stage writes its output and its confidence to the record before the next reads it. | Capture, stage, confirm, apply, recompute. Standing meetings, time off and partial weeks are inputs to the capacity model. | Capture, extract, confirm, file. Nothing is a commitment until the people in the conversation say so. |
| Where a human confirms | Anything low-confidence or over capacity lands in a tray marked for me. Priority and resourcing are mine by default; delegation to the model is a setting, with the override always mine. | Every change is staged for a one-click yes by default. Switched on, decisions carry their reason and can be reversed. | What counts as a commitment. The system records; the people agree. |
| Unattended work | A follow-up loop drafts the one open question to the requester, sends it, holds the request in an awaiting state, and closes the gap when the answer returns. | Recomputes the capacity view and the plan after each confirmed change. | None by design. It runs when a conversation ends. |
| Data and integrations | A database I designed. Output pushed into Asana through the API, where custom fields are enum identifiers rather than strings. | A Postgres database; a calendar integration through Google Cloud so time off and standing meetings are read, not typed. | A database with a record per conversation and per commitment. |
| Identity, permissions, defenses | Identity and permissions designed in from the first version. Secrets kept out of code. Rate limiting, and defenses against SQL, script and prompt injection, on every surface that takes input. | ||
| Runtime | Serverless hosting I set up and administer, with environment-scoped secrets and no public index. | ||
| What a reviewer would still flag | One user. Not hardened for a team, not reviewed by a security function, and the follow-up loop sends email on my behalf without a second approver. | ||
The audit · every line
Your posting, line by line, each with a receipt or a no.
The model showed how I would run the job, and the tools showed what I have built. This is every line of your posting checked against my record, gaps included, grouped the way your posting groups them. The ones you should see first come first.
Read these first
4 rows · 3 partial · 1 gapAt least 3 years of people management experience (4+ preferred)Partial
One year with formal direct reports: at Everyrealm I sourced, staffed and managed the creative production team myself, 3D artists, UI/UX, motion and visual designers.
Around that year, I have led teams of designers and contractors without owning their reporting lines: as pod lead on the Android pod at Huge, where the reporting structure was different, and on agency and contract engagements since. It is not the three years of formal management your posting asks for, so this is Partial.
Develop and manage cross-functional teams of design program managers, operations professionals and designersPartial
I have built one design team from nothing, at Everyrealm, and set the production processes it worked by. I have not managed a team of design program managers. My current role has no direct reports; what I lead there is six teams’ design demand and the partners who deliver it, through the intake, the capacity plan and the design system.
How I would build this team is the second stage of the operating model above.
5+ years managing design teams (preferred)Partial
One year as the formal manager of a design team, at Everyrealm, against the five preferred. The rest is leading designers without owning their reporting lines: on the Android pod at Huge as pod lead, and on agency and contract engagements.
PMP, Lean, Agile or Six Sigma certificationGap
None. What I have is practice: Agile learned from the teams I worked with, then used to drive development projects fully Agile, sprints defined with design leads, and the fixed-date planning that public launches require. The certification is a preferred qualification I do not hold.
Business and people leadership
2 rows · 1 strong · 1 partialDevelop operational strategy to address complex business challenges associated with a large, growing design organizationPartial
I have written and run operating strategy twice: the creative production function at Everyrealm, and the intake, capacity model and design system for the Brand function at Dow Jones. Both were a function, not a large design organization. The method transfers; the scale would be new.
Advise and influence peers, design leaders and business leaders on operational excellenceStrong
Six of eight separately built properties are on the design system I lead, adopted by teams that do not report to me. At Huge I was the connective tissue between internal executives, Google product marketing managers and strategists, and the designers and engineers. At Vertic, a structured review cadence brought skeptical energy-utility executives into agreement early instead of at handoff.
Standards and practice management
4 rows · 3 strong · 1 partialAccountable for adherence to and evolution of design standards, practice management, delivery principles and processesStrong
I lead the design system unifying the event-site builds at Dow Jones: six of eight core properties migrated, build time down about eighty percent, and cross-property inconsistencies eliminated. Migration decisions were made on data tracked in views I built myself. Earlier, the Arizona Public Service program at Vertic produced a comprehensive design system that went into production.
Functional leadership on human centered strategy, research, alignment, analysis, process improvement and change managementPartial
The practice I have run: I planned a year-long UI/UX research and design phase exploring the future of Google Search Ads, defining the sprints with the design lead and Google’s Search UX Design Director. I kept four to six designers on track against the goals, as an embedded team. At Vertic, a three-month UX research phase fed an eight-month design phase. The design system migration is change management across teams outside my reporting line.
Your posting asks for that leadership given to team members. Outside my year at Everyrealm, I have given it to project teams rather than to a team of my own, so this is Partial.
Collaborate with product, engineering and cross-functional partners to improve products and experiencesStrong
At Dow Jones I partner with the commerce and acquisition product design teams on acquisition, onboarding and upsell experiences across WSJ.com, Barron’s.com and MarketWatch.com. At Vertic, the Arizona Public Service site and app went into production with Infosys and twenty-eight-plus engineers. At Huge I was the connective tissue between internal executives, Google product marketing and the designers and engineers.
Advocate for the design process across the businessStrong
The intake exists so design is asked early, with the brief complete, rather than late with half of it. The review cadence at Vertic did the same with executives: they saw the work at concept, when changing it was cheap.
Portfolio and program management
5 rows · 3 strong · 2 partialPartner with design leadership on initiatives that help the organization scale impactStrong
The design system is that kind of initiative: it cut build time on each property by about eighty percent, so the same people ship more. At Everyrealm I scaled a new creative function to delivery across twelve platforms plus web properties and brand work.
Craft and execute operational strategy (allocation, resourcing, prioritization) to drive experience outcomesStrong
This is the work I do every week. The intake turns six teams’ plans into one prioritized, resourced plan, each item with a reason and a capacity cost. The resourcing tool turns decisions made in the meeting into confirmed changes, and capacity is computed rather than assumed. I own the Asana implementation for reporting, capacity and resource management that the plan lands in.
Bring order to complex programs, maintain the organization’s portfolio, and drive large bodies of design work forwardStrong
At Huge, the agency maintaining them, I planned and oversaw the design and development updates to tv.google, android.com including the Android 12 launch, and wearos.google.com, delivered against Google’s launch calendar with creative, content, deployment and localization on the line. For GE Healthcare, executive-level visualizations, a global website and hundreds of media assets through one gated publishing pipeline. At Dow Jones, about eight events and six launches in my first five months.
Develop and manage key metrics on impact of design and the health of experience teamsPartial
Team health I measure: the capacity views I built show load and what is slipping before it slips, and the planning runs on them. Design impact I measure where the program produces its own numbers: build time and adoption on the design system. What I have not built is an organization-wide framework for design’s impact on business outcomes, so this is Partial.
Partner with enterprise teams on human centered operational programs (Human Centered Design, Software Delivery Lifecycle, Global Learning and Development)Partial
The delivery-lifecycle side I have lived: design phases handed into engineering with Infosys at Vertic, and development projects I drove fully Agile. An enterprise learning and development program I have not built; the closest is the design system adoption across teams outside my reporting line.
Qualifications
10 rows · 10 strongBachelor’s degree · Masters or MBA preferredStrong
B.S., Advertising Communications. M.A., Digital Media Management, Hyper Island (Sweden) and Teesside University (U.K.), 2014.
At least 8 years of project management · 10+ years of program management of design deliverables and operationsStrong
Thirteen-plus years, nine of them in Senior and Director titles, almost all of it on design deliverables: websites, apps, design systems, brand and campaign production, and the operations that carry them.
4+ years using and managing design toolsStrong
Figma for more than four years. I own the brand marketing team’s Asana implementation end to end, configured by me for reporting, capacity and resource management. Jira and Confluence for more than eight years across agency and client work, and brand and site production on Webflow.
3+ years working with corporate teamsStrong
In-house at Dow Jones now, and before that thirteen years delivering for corporate teams at Google, GE Healthcare, Microsoft, SAP Ariba, Vodafone, Merck and Arizona Public Service, including their executives.
Experience working directly with designers, researchers and strategistsStrong
In every role. At Dow Jones, content design, UX/UI, motion and video. At Huge, Google’s product marketing managers and strategists alongside our designers and engineers, and the Search Ads design lead and Google’s Search UX Design Director. At Everyrealm, the creative team I built.
Expertise in design development processesStrong
UX research into UI/UX design into a design system into production, end to end: the Arizona Public Service program at Vertic ran exactly that sequence over eleven months. The NYU Langone UX and IA audit for Moving Brands strengthened an existing design system.
Expertise in understanding the PDLC/SDLCStrong
Design handed into engineering and taken to production with twenty-eight-plus engineers at Vertic; deployment and localization on Google’s properties at Huge; development projects I drove fully Agile. The tools above went through requirements, build, review and run with me holding the requirements.
Expertise in design systems, design quality and design measuresStrong
The design system I lead is the receipt: a quality problem (inconsistency across eight separately built properties) turned into a measure (build time, down about eighty percent) and an adoption count (six of eight).
Exceptional communication and collaboration · excellent problem solving and influencingStrong
In the words of a Google marketing director I worked with: “Exceptional communication and problem-solving.” The influencing receipt is the design system: six of eight properties adopted by teams that do not report to me.
Familiarity with AI tools, and applying them to enhance outcomes and drive efficienciesStrong
The four tools above, built for and used in my own planning, and the governance I designed for the agents I run. I have not put a number on the efficiency; what it buys is time on the decisions that need a person.
Why Capital One, why now
The work is going well. What I want next is the scale it was built for.
I am about eight months into my current role, and the design system, the intake and the Asana implementation are all in use. In the last three months both senior leaders in my department have left. They left over resistance to growing with AI, and to letting the team grow the right way: we are under-resourced, and without the ability to put better AI-supported workflows in place. I respect the place and the people.
Your posting names familiarity with AI tools as part of how the role succeeds, and asks for someone who thinks about how systems and structures scale. I have built those systems for one function, for my team. EPS.xd is a design organization. I would build them there with the design leaders, program managers, engineers and designers whose experience I want beside me, not instead of me.
I am in New York. Happy to walk through it live if this turns into a conversation, the operating model and the tools included.
Career
Career since 2013.
Feb 2026 to present
Dow Jones · UX Program Manager, Brand
Sole UX Program Manager for the Brand function, and its lead; program titles in the brand division carry no level. Intake, capacity, reporting and cadence for design work across event and conference properties like JournalHouse and the WSJ Leadership Institute, spanning content design, UX/UI, motion design and some video production. About eight events and six launches in the first five months, each a fixed-date go-live.
Lead the design system unifying the event-site builds: six of eight core properties migrated, build time down about eighty percent. Built the AI intake that receives and triages requests from six teams. Own the brand marketing team’s Asana implementation for reporting, capacity and resource management. Partner with the commerce and acquisition product design teams on acquisition, onboarding and upsell experiences across WSJ.com, Barron’s.com and MarketWatch.com.
Apr 2023 to Feb 2026
Senior Program and Project Management (Contract)
For GE Healthcare, the asset-production phase of the global Better Health Study, one of GE’s largest marketing campaigns: executive-level visualizations, a global website and hundreds of media assets with supporting data analysis, all through one gated publishing pipeline. For Moving Brands, a UX and IA audit strengthening NYU Langone’s website design system. For Prophet, an MVP website redesign for a pharmaceutical client in the middle of a merger, and brand and Webflow production for eonmen.com.
Mar 2022 to Mar 2023
Everyrealm · Director of Creative Operations
A venture-backed start-up with $50M+ raised from a16z and others, building metaverse environments. A first-of-its-kind role with no brief: built the creative production function from zero, sourced, staffed and managed the team myself (3D artists, UI/UX, motion and visual designers), and introduced the production processes and methodologies. Delivered metaverse real estate across twelve platforms plus web properties and brand work. Owned the Monaverse vendor relationship end to end and managed external vendors across motion, 3D-rendering production and the promotional video. The chapter ended with the market, not with the work: the board pivoted the company toward game development when that market turned down.
Mar 2020 to Mar 2022
Huge · Senior Project Manager, Android Pod at Google
Pod lead. Planned and oversaw the design and development updates to tv.google, android.com and wearos.google.com as the agency maintaining them, delivered against Google’s launch calendar, including the Android 12 launch, a public and immovable date, with creative, content, deployment and localization on the line. The connective tissue between internal executives, Google product marketing managers and strategists, and the designers and engineers, reprioritizing continuously to hit time-sensitive dates without team burnout.
Also planned a year-long UI/UX research and design phase on the future of Google Search Ads, defining its sprints with the design lead and Google’s Search UX Design Director and keeping four to six designers on track against the goals as an embedded team. Tracked burn and spend on those engagements throughout.
Jan 2017 to Mar 2020
Vertic · Senior Digital Project Manager
Enterprise websites and multi-country campaigns for Vodafone, SAP Ariba, Microsoft, Innophos and Merck. Flagship: a new B2C transactional .com and mobile app for Arizona Public Service, with a three-month UX research phase, an eight-month UX/UI design phase producing a comprehensive design system, then stewardship into production with Infosys and twenty-eight-plus engineers. A structured review cadence aligned skeptical energy-utility executives early instead of surprising them late.
Oct 2013 to Dec 2016
POSSIBLE and Beyond · Digital PM, Digital Producer
The Petfinder.com redesign, rebrand and launch campaign. Purina Veterinary. SEM and social for Degree and Wild Turkey. The Google for Work site under a tight deadline with a distributed team. UX and development support on ConEdison’s .com. Novartis heart-failure patient-app explorations.
On record
Verbatim, from people I have worked with.
“Meticulous capacity planning to hit targets across every workstream without burnout. Exceptional communication and problem-solving.”
“A great PM. Diligent on the financial, creative and timing details, and a strong voice on UX and design.”
“A team player and problem solver on a complex, multi-part, year-long program. Strong client relationships throughout.”