Builder.
Leader of builders.
AI-forward design executive. Founded CVS Health's AI Design Lab. Building with AI-native development tools.
I'm an AI-forward design leader. I've shipped production AI products, founded the AI Design Lab at CVS Health, and I'm still writing code with AI tools today.
My namesake, the architect Eliel Saarinen, said, “Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context.” I studied architecture before I ever designed a screen, and that systems-thinking instinct has run through everything I have designed. It is as true in agentic software as it was in his day for physical spaces.
I've led design organizations from 5 to 400+ people across consumer fintech, healthcare, and enterprise SaaS. Through it all, I kept my hands on the tools. I'm a maker at heart. The tools changed over 25 years. The obsession with getting it right never did.
Most recently, I was the VP and head of design at CVS Health, a Fortune-6 healthcare company, responsible for design, content, conversational design, and user research.
Previously, I was the Managing Director and Head of design at Charles Schwab, responsible for all consumer, enterprise, and internal applications serving retail investors, advisors, and Schwab employees.
I was named after an architect, raised by artists, and have been making things as long as I can remember.
The first ten years.
Agencies, the early web, and a consultancy of my own.
My first ten years were consulting, in the United States and Europe, at some of the largest design agencies in the business. Digitas in London, Europe's largest, where I led design for Adidas, Boots, Ford of Europe, British Telecom, and Barclaycard. Agency work gives you reps, and reps are how judgment gets built.
As part of that work, I ran user research on three continents, in two languages, with hundreds of participants. I sat in people's homes and offices and watched how they actually used the things we made. You design for the person in front of you, not the person in the deck.
In 2006 I co-founded Thread Experience in San Francisco and spent five years building it, running business development, client strategy, and the design work itself for VMware, TIBCO, SAP, Sony, Wells Fargo and a number of startups. We partnered with the Public Library of Science on PLOS ONE, which became one of the largest open-access journals in the world. My last client was Charles Schwab. They asked me to design their first mobile apps. That engagement became the next twelve years.
How I lead.
Design leadership from boardroom strategy to pixel level craft.
I'm driven by curiosity. I set design vision and build the culture and team to deliver it: hiring, career ladders, the shape of the team. There should be a traceable strategic thread running through design decisions, grounded in strategy, craft and systems thinking.
I'm a hands-on design leader who collaborates in code. I prototype, I build, and I review at the detail level. I don't ask teams to adopt tools I haven't mastered myself, which is why I spent this year building with Cursor, Codex and Claude Code instead of reading about them.
I have a bias toward action. Show rather than tell. A prototype is worth a thousand meetings. The rooms I foster are collaborative rooms, where people make something to think through a problem rather than talk about making it, and where humor sits alongside rigor.
I stay focused on outcomes and stay flexible about methodology. Tools and approach are always iterating. Shared outcomes are what keep design aligned with our engineering and product partners.
What I believe.
Design is an optimistic act.
Design is about envisioning a better future, working within creative constraints, and asking how might this be better? This curiosity is a mindset and a way of seeing the world. Design is iterative in nature, and the best work is collaborative; it is always blurry at the edges, with product, design, and engineering thinking and making together.
AI is the most exciting change to the tool belt in my career. However, it changes almost nothing about what makes design good. Design judgment is now more important than ever. When output is infinite, cheap, and probabilistic, the scarce things are knowing what to ask for and knowing what good is.
I also believe empathy hours are not optional. The best products come from teams who've spent real time with the people they build for. Research and service design are foundational to understanding what people need in experiences, especially as our design surfaces are changing rapidly.
Design is an optimistic act; I feel lucky to practice the craft, and that gets me out of bed every day.
Outside of work.
Marin. Pacific Ocean. Art, nature and building.
I live in Mill Valley with my family, surrounded by redwoods and trails, but only 7 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge. I surf year-round with my two kids, which is mostly an exercise in cold-water patience and reading weather. It builds a bit of grit that the Finns call "sisu". Surf Vikings, the hyperlocal forecasting tool I shipped this spring, is a thing I built because I wanted it to exist.
Outside design, I garden, make art, take photos, and build with the kids. We spend a lot of time in the woods and the beach. I value resetting and recharging in nature. We don't have a word for it in English. The Japanese call it shinrin-yoku, "forest bathing," and the Norwegians call it friluftsliv, "free air life".