Case Study 03

Cameo VP Design.

Resourceful, not resources. As the pandemic raged, I led the design discipline for the ultimate celebrity/fan experience. Despite a historically competitive market for talent, we recruited a distributed product design team, growing 7x in 10 months, beating out top tech companies for top designers.

As leader reporting to the co-founder and CTO, I oversaw the development of Design as Cameo achieved a $1B valuation during Series C funding and navigated the challenges that come with hyper-growth.

  • Without ever having met in person, a key win was our ability to establish familiar design processes like research, development, and critique. At a time when the pandemic was at its peak, we developed design culture despite the odds. When we did meet 10 months in, it was lovely.

    Assembling such a talented team despite the distance was a feat in and of itself, but the bet was a good one; the creativity, ideas, and execution were evident in the product.

    Myself, I am still an active user and talent one can order (for free).

  • Founding

    Design Operations incl. FP&A

    Talent Search & Recruiting

    Designer Career Paths for Growth

    Design Critique, Process, & Culture

    Product Design System, Architecture, & Strategy

    Diversity, Equality, & Inclusion Work

  • Product Designers from across the US

    2 First-year grads recruited from USC

    Founders & C-suite

    Celebrity Advisors & Investors

    Recruiting

    FP&A + Legal

The ultimate celebrity/fan experience.

This is a Cameo from Snoop to me. It’s one-of-kind digital luxury that preceded NFT’s, and a forever keepsake.

(Click or double tap to play)

Fan Clubs are special places for a celebrity to reach their fans.
VIP Fan Clubs are for subscribers only.

Product Design was in-progress and improved daily through design critique. However, my first move was to create designer job descriptions and career paths for growth where there were none. This was critical in retaining existing talent and recruiting new designers to the team from diverse backgrounds and locations.

The Y-Ladder, refined.

Having served in all of these roles myself, I know the value in spending more time in the individual contributor layer – the Designer II and Senior Designer levels – and so I stacked those layers deep.

A challenge every one of us had to overcome during the pandemic was distributed, remote design collaboration and critique through Zoom. Constantly adapting, the team did an excellent job.

Product Designers are always in high demand, and the pandemic time was no different. Competing with major social media and software companies for design talent, I involved myself in mentoring students from cutting-edge programs like USC’s Iovine and Young Academy, where business + design is a theme. With efforts like these, we recruited top grads to our growing team.

Los Angeles in general proved to be fertile ground for emerging product designers from the likes of Tinder, Hulu, and Quibi. Having spent my career in San Francisco, it was a joy to see our discipline growing in LA and beyond.

Whatever, wherever.

San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Lake Tahoe, Austin, Venice Beach, Silver Lake, Atlanta, New York, and Miami… creative professionals bringing their unique talent every day.