Living in the gap

Between the business, the technology and the user. Somebody has to hold all three at once. I’ve done this for twenty years under a lot of different titles.

These days that means fractional product and design leadership for an array of founders and startups and running my product and systems consultancy, Inspired Environment. Before that, SVP of UX architecture at Chase, global platform product design at Condé Nast, and eleven years running a previous version of my agency.

Professionally I live by a few platitudes. “Hire for desire and teach for skill.” Every team I’ve built, from a handful of people to seventy across four offices, came from that belief. “Software is human to human regardless of the vertical, application, or end user.” Well, because it is. And lastly for both work and life, “the map is not the territory” because that one keeps me curious and in a constant state of learning. And really, what else is there?