Hi, I’m Laura!
A design leader who guides teams to solve complex problems in a customer centric way.
I provide strategic vision and create the conditions for teams to successfully build innovative products.
My superpowers
People Leadership
I am a servant leader who cares deeply for the people I work with and support. I provide clarity with care and empathy. I don’t shy away from tough conversations. I invest in the relationships needed across teams to remove the barriers to success.
Design Strategy
I ground my strategic approach in design thinking. I align on the problem to solve, establish the ideal customer experience and roadmap what would need to be true to get to that ideal state. I am able to effectively balance customer outcomes with business objectives.
Customer Research
I believe my role as a design leader is to evangelize for the customer, which requires spreading a deep understanding of the customer. My approach to research is diverse. I balance exploratory, generative and evaluative methodologies. I leverage data points from qualitative and quantitative sources. I bring cross functional teams along with me on the journey to test, learn and iterate our ideas.
Experience Design
I have over 20 years of experience as a design practitioner and leader. I have built products for every type of organization from start ups to Fortune 500 companies. I have worked with external and internal customers. I love creating experiences that solve problems and yield results. I am well versed in visual design, interaction design, service design, research and usability best practices.
My career story
Throughout my career, one thing has always been true – I have always led with curiosity and empathy.
When I started my design career as a production designer focused on creating print and marketing materials for international markets, I took the time to understand how the designs I was creating needed to shift for different cultures in different countries and advocated for those customers.
When I started designing online products, I became obsessed with understanding interaction patterns and how consistency could drive understanding. I championed experiences that were clean, simple and easy to use. I invested heavily in customer empathy and in market testing to inform the success of my designs.
As I shifted into a leadership role, I was purposeful in the kind of leader I would become. I focused on the leaders that had always brought out the best in me and determined how I would become that kind of leader. I knew what designers needed to be successful and took proactive steps to create the conditions for my team’s success. I invested in creating a culture of psychological safety. I ensured my teams felt supported while pushing them to do the best work of their careers.
Recent experience
Capital One
I have been working with Capital One Auto Finance since 2016. Over that time, I have worked with multiple teams on multiple initiatives, including loan originations through the Auto Navigator and Auto Refinance online products and supporting existing auto finance customers via the Capital One mobile app. See the work
D.R. Horton
D.R. Horton is the number one home builder by volume in the United States. You may not know the name, but you have probably been in a D.R. Horton home. I worked with D.R. Horton from 2011 to 2016 during their digital transformation. I was the first design hire on a team that rapidly grew from 4 to 20+ to reach their ambitious digital goals. See the work
Testimonials
Laura does an amazing job connecting dots and people. She regularly makes connections in group or individual discussions to a situation she has been engaged in previously, or an individual who encountered a similar problem or challenge, and came up with a great solution. Laura does this instinctively and selflessly and, at times, even on topics that are outside of her immediate area of expertise. Laura has a real passion to help others succeed and this shows up in the way she engages.
James Lane
I’ve had the pleasure of working with Laura for many years at Capital One. She was one of the first people I met with, and she impressed me with her grasp of the product and all the areas for improvement we should tackle. Laura also shines as a caring, dedicated people leader. She takes the time to get to know each of the people on her team, and to help them reach their full potential. She goes beyond her direct reports, to really set up the environment and conditions for people to succeed and do great work.
Renee McKeon Rives
Laura is the kind of leader every team dreams of having. I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to work under her guidance. She leads with kindness, clarity, and unwavering support, always empowering her team to grow and succeed.
Her ability to balance strategic vision with genuine care for her people is something I deeply admire. She fosters an environment where creativity thrives, challenges become learning opportunities, and every team member feels valued. Her mentorship has had a lasting impact on me, and I know I’m a better professional because of it. Any team would be truly lucky to have her.
Sean Marcano
Laura was my director at Capital One, and she was an excellent design leader to work under. She always made time for her direct reports and tailored her management style to best support each individual and their career growth journey. She gave great guidance while also allowing her direct reports the room to grow and ownership of key opportunities that she knew would help them grow.
As a design leader amongst her cross-functional peers, she was very well regarded, and was highly sought after for her design thinking and expertise. She had a natural talent when it came to helping lead a team through envisioning a bold product vision, and driving the strategy for how to get there, in a way that made her shine not just as a designer, but as a bold leader. I witnessed and benefitted from her strategic thinking on many projects.
She helped shape the designer I am now and I would highly recommend her to anyone seeking a strong leader at your company.
Angeline Chang
Recent case studies
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Email as a channel was showing a lot of success with customers and the strategic decision was made to increase email volume. I led the effort to fund a new pod and draft a new process leveraging design thinking. The increased email volume as a result of the new process and the additional pods resulted…
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Over time, Capital One had launched multiple consumer and dealer facing products. The products were created by different teams operating fairly siloed. The lack of consistency was beginning to hinder our ability to scale our efforts. I led an initiative to eliminate arbitrary uniqueness across 10 work streams by unifying the code base and design…
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The Auto Navigator product and marketing teams had been challenged to provide a more personalized experience to customers to increase engagement and conversion. There were multiple streams of experimentation work by multiple teams happening at once to determine how to best take on this challenge. Over a few months, the teams had individually gained learnings…
Contact
Phone
(214) 558-9490