Designs That Deliver

Black Diamond

FIRMS

USER

AUM

Cups Of Coffee

Director, Product Strategy & Design

Responsible for the management and leadership of the design organization for the Black Diamond Wealth Platform. We support twenty Agile teams from Discovery thru Delivery.  

  • Led research, strategy and design for industry leading Black Diamond Wealth Solutions.
  • 3 time winner of the Black Diamond Hackathon, personal favorite!
  • Modernized the User Experience and User Interface of the platform.
  • Led the creation of the Avalanche Design System.  A visual language and component library for the platform.
  • Introduced Lean UX principles and activities into the product development process

Business Challenge

When I joined Black Diamond, the company was navigating a period of significant transition. Following two consecutive acquisitions, the organization had evolved from a startup culture into part of a larger corporate structure. Understandably, this left the founding team cautious and change-wary.

At the same time, I inherited a group of talented designers who had been individually recruited for their visual design strengths but had not yet gelled into a cohesive team. Each brought unique skills, but there was little alignment on process, roles, or shared goals. The broader product development organization was also mid-redesign and grappling with how — or even if — user experience design could meaningfully impact a platform that had already seen market success. 

The Challenge was Threefold

  • Unify and elevate the design team into a collaborative, user-centered practice.
  • Build trust across the organization by demonstrating the strategic value of design in driving product evolution.
  • Modernize and expand the platform to gain additonal market share.

This meant quickly gaining fluency in a complex financial platform, aligning design talent around a shared methodology, and earning the confidence of product and engineering partners — all while helping to shape a long-term design vision in a fast-evolving ecosystem.

ev-ism:

“When you start a new role especially a leadership role (as an outsider) the best thing you can do is listen and observe.”

How Do We Engage

Every corporation looks at organization design differently.   In most B2B corporations design usually reports into the VP of Product, Marketing or the CTO in my experience.  Instead of a Chief Design Officer.   At Black Diamond, Design reports into the VP of Product.

 So, as a design leader in a B2B corporation I have less direct authority over product decisions and have to rely heavily on my ability to influence teams & leadership.  There are several approaches to setting up a design organization for success and they all rely on a good relations with your product managers and developers.

Organizationally we take a hybrid approach between consulting and embedding with development teams.

 

Process, Process, Process

Also, coming from an agency background I love process diagrams.  There was  a version of this process in every pitch I gave during my agency days.  A decade later after leading two corporate design organizations I know this just isn’t reality.  Our true process is we meet product management / development where ever they are in software development lifecycle.

Original Graphic Produced by the Incredible Team at ZenDesk.

At any given time we have projects in each phase of the Zen Desk triple diamond.  One designer is generally serving multiple agile teams on any given day.  Flexibility and a generalist mindset are the keys to success.

ev-ism;

“Know the process inside & out so you can break it anytime you need to!”

Let's Talk Product

Black Diamond is a B2B2C platform.  Our main customers work as Registered Investment Advisors (RIA) that are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or a state securities authority to provide investment advice and manage client assets. They are required to act in their clients’ best interests, meaning they have a fiduciary duty.

An advisor can be independent or work in a firm.  Either way they have a list of clients that they service.  These are usually High Net Worth individuals who have enough assets to require investment advice.

ev-ism:

“If you want your opinion to matter, learn the business!”

Black Diamond Platform

Advisory Experience

The Advisor Experience enables financial firms to manage and report on their clients’ portfolios.

I Led and coached multiple initiatives to evolve the product from a pure reporting application to a wealth management platform.

Client Experience

CX is the first true client portal for Black Diamond.  The portal allows end user investors access to their accounts and documents across web and mobile.

In order to research the needs of the actual user we had to go to several firms pitch our idea to the advisor so we could get access to their client.

It was harder then it sounds!

Avalanche Design System

Why avalanche you ask?  We are a white labeled application.  So, creating a single brand look and feel wasn’t an option.

Through multiple iterations we  created a system which can be leveraged across the platform and is easily brandable by our clients.

Hiring Managers & Recruiters – If you would like to see more detailed design work of my individual contributions to the Black Diamond platform, please reach out and I’d be happy to share with you directly!

Industry Achievements

It is truly a privilege to have our work acknowledged. Each of these awards represents the incredible teams dedicated to growing the Black Diamond platform and our customers’ success.

Business Outcomes

The platform continues to scale and earn industry recognition for its user experience—receiving accolades year after year. Our intuitive design has become a key differentiator in sales conversations and a recurring reason clients cite during renewals. Design is now recognized as essential not only to the platform’s success, but also to our marketing and company culture.

Over time, my role evolved from leading design for a single product (Black Diamond) to advising product and design organizations across a global network of companies—championing user-centered strategy at scale.

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