Head of Design, Spotify Ads
Strategy, Leadership, Storytelling, Product Design, Illustration
My remit was overseeing Product Design and User Research for the R&D side of our business unit. Within this division, I scaled my Design organization from 34 to 62 across 18 months to support 3 distinct product areas: Self-Serve advertising, Podcast Publishing, and Spotify's Ad Formats. Here are a few of the high-impact projects I'm proud of:
Ways of Working - My first major project was to lead a cross-functional effort to redesign our commercialization process and introduce "phase gates" for strengthened alignment across our work streams. Here's a case study.
Spotify Ads Accessibility Northstar - Crafted and implement the playbook for our R&D and Sales/Marketing organizations. Here's an export of the slides from my strategic playbook.
Design Ethics Northstar - I shipped the Product Design organization's Design Ethics playbook. Here's an export of the slides from my strategic playbook.
Design System Company Bet - To unify our disparate Advertising and Publishing product surfaces, and to help modernize Spotify's design system dubbed Encore's, I advocated for and successfully led a company-wide "bet" to leverage a bolstered-up web component library. This effort positively impacted our organization's speed-to-delivery metrics while helping our quickly growing product landscape become more on-brand and familial.
Executive sponsor for DIB efforts - Created and led strategy for our team focused on diversity, inclusion, and belonging to provide expertise and accountability across our product offerings. This team took a holistic approach to addressing diversity challenges, developing a diversity strategy, becoming a resource for employees, and fostering innovation. I was also proud to work with the immensely talented Krystal Lauk to deliver the team's DIB brand identity and other creative assets to bolster up our efforts. (See project below).
Executive sponsor for Equitable Design and UX program - Contributed and provided oversight for a Spotify-wide effort to craft solutions with EDUX at its heart and help everyone, regardless of ability, circumstance, or location, have an equal opportunity to use and benefit from our products. My role was to oversee guide work across 5 workstreams: App Performance, Accessibility, Localization, Ethics, and Safety.
Below are some of my hands-on design contributions. Creative Direction, communication design, and Design Culture-focused work, above and beyond my strategic leadership role.
Above is the intro to our Global Design Days sizzle reel created by Milk Inside with my creative direction.
Below is a recap short film of my team's 2022 offsite. Filmed and produced by Picnic Studios with my creative direction.
DIB (Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging) illustration work by Krystal Lauk with my creative direction.
