Design Leadership
Mentoring designers while delivering business outcomes
Overview
My experience developing junior designers spans agency, product, and academic environments, each requiring distinct approaches to mentorship while maintaining project momentum. At 14four, I helped organize and facilitate the internship program, guiding new designers through the fast-paced nature of agency work. This environment required teaching them how to maintain quality while working under tight deadlines and managing multiple client projects simultaneously. The quick-turnaround nature of agency work created unique teaching moments about prioritization, client communication, and efficient design processes.
At Moat Metrics, I mentored designers within a product team environment, which allowed for deeper exploration of product thinking, user research, and iterative design processes. I had the opportunity to nurture an intern through to full-time employment, teaching them the nuances of working within a product organization - from stakeholder management to feature development cycles to maintaining design systems.
As an instructor at Eastern Washington University, I balanced individual student mentorship with the need to maintain curriculum pacing. This experience further developed my ability to identify learning opportunities while ensuring core educational objectives were met on schedule. This multi-faceted experience across different environments has honed my ability to develop junior talent while consistently meeting organizational deadlines and objectives.
