Summary
Product and innovation leader with two decades of experience producing and managing development for world class digital products, platforms and toys. Deep expertise in user experience design, especially for zero-to-one consumer products leveraging emerging technologies to educate, entertain and inform. Passionate about building high-quality digital platforms and systems to inspire and support responsible playful learning.
Skills
Product innovation. Champion hypothesis-driven experimentation culture, building on insights from rapid prototyping, iterative testing, and high-impact learning loops. Identify opportunities by unncovering critical unmet needs to address through insight-driven audience research.
Strategic leadership. Long-term vision for product/service innovation. Integration strategy for ecosystem expansion and growth.
Experience design, development and optimization. Opportunity identification, customer research, ideation, proof-of-concept development, validation, value proposition framing, business model development, system design, pilot, launch, learn and optimization.
Team leadership and development. Empower cross-functional teams to run high-impact learning experiments. Coach global leaders through mission-driven product development, evidence-driven decision making, strategic planning, business case development and change management.
Experience
Head of Innovation, Creative Play Lab • The LEGO Group
London, UK • September 2021 - October 2025
Shaped and delivered new digital–physical play experiences for children and families worldwide. Defined the Creative Play Lab’s innovation strategy and operating model, empowering global R&D leaders to pioneer breakthrough product lines offering measurable lifetime value to children and families, while providing long-term incremental profit for the LEGO Group. Built and ran robust pipeline of core innovations, each forecasting >1B DKK incremental revenue annually, by coaching and leading multi-functional teams (spanning Design, Engineering, Research, Marketing) across product development lifecycles. Shaped and delivered new digital–physical play experiences for children and families worldwide.
Key work and impact:
Took DUPLO Interactive Adventure Train from concept to global release, increasing customer satisfaction and lifetime value.
Scaled LEGO City Missions from pilot to award-winning global product line, recognized for Best Creative and Innovative Execution and Creative Campaign of the Year in industry awards, the product line encourages building through interactive, story-driven play.
Guided exploration and development of what the award-winning LEGO Smart Play System could be for digital native LEGO builders of tomorrow.
Head of Kids’ Engagement, Digital Consumer Engagement (concurrent role) • The LEGO Group
London, UK • August 2022 - May 2023
Took a concurrent senior role in leadership team, owning product strategy and performance for platforms designed to support long-term engagement and retention as children grow.
Key work and impact:
Drove strategic pivot from niche beta mobile app to launch a scalable, device-agnostic global membership platform, supporting ongoing fan engagement through clear success metrics and iterative optimization across LEGO’s digital ecosystem.
Oversaw Doom the Gloom, an award-winning internet safety game, and contributed to LEGO’s Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children policy development.Took a concurrent senior director role in Digital Consumer Engagement leadership team, focused on building platforms that could grow with children over time.
Staff Product Manager • Sony PlayStation
San Francisco, CA • June 2019 - July 2021
Set the vision, strategy, scope, and roadmap for PlayStation’s universal search and platform services worldwide, unifying discovery across console, web, and mobile and achieving an 80% success rate for players finding desired content within the top ten results.
Defined the vision and roadmap for a personalized feature discovery system to help players learn new ways to engage across the PlayStation ecosystem.
Drove a worldwide PS5 take-home beta programme during the pandemic, reaching 40 million users across 78 countries and supporting a launch that generated $10 billion in revenue, with the platform receiving TIME’s Best Inventions recognition, a Good Design Award, and an iF Design Award for the PlayStation 5 user experience.
Product Management Lead • Elephant (Client: Apple)
Cupertino, CA • June 2017 - June 2019
Lead product management for new global product marketing platform end-to-end: from discovery, vision, strategy, and requirements to roadmap, distribution, localization and optimization worldwide. Embedded onsite with client. Client: Apple.
Product management advisor for Elephant’s Apple engagements.
Head of Product, English Language Arts • Amazon Education
Foster City, CA • June 2016 - February 2017
Expanded TenMarks Education's personalized learning program, used by 85% of U.S school districts for math, by defining and building a new product category for English Language Arts.
Defined new Writing product vision, strategy, requirements, roadmap, and go-to-market plan. Managed product lifecycle, from research, design and development to production, distribution and user testing.
Drove rapid experiments for new feature design by iterating through ideas and testing hypotheses to validate assumptions.
Led competitive market analyses, design sprints, user research and proposal reviews with senior management for evaluating opportunities to achieve product-market fit.
Director of Product • IfOnly
San Francisco, CA • March 2015 - May 2016
Directed product management and product design for the IfOnly Marketplace: the world’s first online experience marketplace with philanthropic give-back built into every sale.
Led mobile, discovery, talent portal, and a suite of tools enabling talent (sellers) to consistently deliver high quality bespoke experiences.
Led usability research on talent (seller) on-boarding and post-purchase experience fulfillment. Defined/refined new post-purchase features for vendors including Fulfillment To-Do List, Order Modification System, and Omni-Channel Communication System.
Launched company’s first iOS and Android apps. Optimized site for mobile use.
Director of Product • Sourcebits
San Francisco, CA • January 2014 - February 2015
Defined vision, strategy, requirements, and roadmap for new social app, and, positioned it in competitive international marketplace. Pitched product and business proposals to angel investors resulting in funding to support product development and launch. Incorporated business to support app, managed P&L, updated investors monthly. Built and directed lean team through product ideation, development, usability research and launch.
As head of product studio, built and directed usability research lab. Mentored product managers within organization to define new app concepts and feature sets throughout product lifecycles. Led discovery workshops to refine new mobile app ideas for clients.
Principal Product Manager • Reverb Technologies
San Mateo, CA • November 2012 - November 2013
Defined, from concept through launch and redesign, a personalized news discovery app that helps people make better connections through our understanding of language. The award-winning Reverb app reached #1 in the App Store overall and #1 in the News category.
Built social and content discovery experiences leveraging machine learning and natural language processing technologies.
Developed ideas into engineering requirements, detailed wireframes, user experience flows, and test cases for feature validation. Defined and drove implementation and analysis of key metrics and cohort analysis of key features.
Prioritized roadmap, coordinated with engineering, design, marketing and executives.
Product Manager of Mobile Social Gaming Platform • GREE International
San Francisco, CA • April - November 2012
Launched GREE's social-mobile gaming platform in the U.S. market. Defined social-mobile gaming platform vision, strategy, requirements and roadmap for the global market.
Lead definition, design and development of new social networking features by assessing consumer needs, writing user stories, creating wireframes, defining product specifications, and working with 1st and 3rd party studios for integration.
Built consensus between game studios and cross-functional platform teams through regular travel to workshop with stakeholders in Tokyo.
Product Manager of Social Games • Nickelodeon/MTV Networks
San Francisco, CA • July - November 2011
Defined product strategy, requirements and roadmap for social games including Nickelodeon’s award-winning MMO "MonkeyQuest" and the 5-star social game spoofing MTV’s "Jersey Shore" on Facebook. Kept the “shore” game fresh by leading brainstorming sessions to create weekly content jokes about new episodes to release in time with the show.
Managed the gathering, processing, and interpretation of user behaviors for live social games. Integrated usability studies, user research and market analysis into requirements to ensure games satisfy evolving player needs and target appropriate audiences.
Wrote specifications, prioritized features, built consensus, & facilitated communication throughout game development process.
Producer, iWork Applications • Apple
Cupertino, CA • September 2010 - April 2011
Managed the iterative design process to re-conceive the iWork product suite- Keynote, Pages and Numbers- for iPad and iPhone. Highlights include leading design and development of interactive in-app tutorials for the debut of the iWork suite on iPad and iPhone, and leading the design of a new batch of transition animations for Keynote.
Managed product design from concept to functional prototype for two brand new products— iBooks 2.0 interactive textbooks for iPad and iBooks Author, the desktop application to create them. Facilitated brainstorming sessions, design reviews, and project prioritization for new features with senior management.
Defined and managed agreements with vendors, from RFP and SOW to budget, schedule, content delivery, and refinement.
Engineering Project Manager • Apple
Cupertino, CA • February 2006 - September 2010
Cross-functional Engineering Project Management:
Drove several major updates to products requiring the support of internet services, including the iWeb rebrand and a full product lifecycle revamp of Backup from requirement analysis through design revisions, re-development for three operating systems, QA, localization, developer seeding, Help/Legal updates and Marketing repositioning.
Managed research and development of new in-house system and tool to collect, dynamically correlate and display customer support data trends with engineering system logs so managers can quickly understand the impact of their decisions in releases.
Business Analysis and Engineering Support:
Designed and implemented system to identify, validate, prioritize and track top customer issues. Led support status forum with EPMs and senior management to raise top customer concerns and plan short and long term resolutions for upcoming releases.
Led Engineering Support for Web Gallery, including initiating, organizing, and providing relevant data to bolster a successful campaign to improve performance of the service worldwide.
Developed and implemented models to analyze trends in support requests to qualify cross-functional management initiatives.
Education
IMD Business School
Executive Catalyst in Leadership, Innovation, & Strategy | Lausanne, Switzerland • March 2024
UC Berkeley Executive Education
High Impact Leadership Certificate | Berkeley, CA • September 2021
Section
Certified Innovation Strategist | San Francisco, CA • July 2021
General Assembly
User Experience Design Certification | San Francisco, CA • May 2017
Fraunhofer Center for Research in Computer Graphics
International Certificate in New Media Design | Providence, RI • July 2000
Rhode Island School of Design
International Certificate in New Media Design | Providence, RI • July 2000
Wellesley College
B.A. cum laude, Philosophy major, Psychology minor | Wellesley, MA • May 1999
Speaking & Community Building
As an Open Innovation Fellow for London& Partners in collaboration with the Royal College of Art, I worked to build meaningful and lasting innovation within diverse communities in London. I speak on product innovation, product management leveraging emerging technologies, and leadership working with organizations including Women in Technology at Sony (WiTS), The Product School, The Product Event and SIGGRAPH, sharing practical perspectives on how teams can build meaningful, human-centered products that scale. My work in these communities also includes mentoring, panel discussions, and supporting early-career product and design leaders through formal and informal programmes.
Imperial College Business School
Open Innovation Panel Speaker in Symposium on Corporate Innovation Acceleration | London, UK · October 2022
London & Partners in collaboration with the Royal College of Art
Open Innovation Fellow | London, UK · March-June 2022
Women in Technology at Sony (WiTS)
San Francisco Chapter Lead + launched Mentorship Program | San Francisco, CA · 2020-2021
The Product Event
Speaker on Innovation and Product Management | San Francisco, CA · 2019-2020
The Product School
Featured Lecturer on Product Innovation Techniques | San Francisco and San Jose, CA · May 2018
ZERO1 public art installation
On-site Producer for Camille Utterback’s interactive art “Abundance” | San Jose City Hall, CA · September 2007
SIGGRAPH 2000: Ideas that Inspire 21st Century’s Digital Visions
Panelist on Approach to New Media Design and Technology Education | New Orleans, LA · July 2000
Awards
Best Future Tech for LEGO SMART Play System
Best of Consumer Electronics Show · January 2026
Kidscreen’s Gold Star for LEGO SMART Play System
Kidscreen Awards · January 2026
Gold: Creative Campaign of the Year for LEGO City Missions
Field Marketing and Brand Experience Award · December 2023
Gold: Best Creative and Innovative Execution for LEGO City Missions
Institute of Promotional Marketing Awards · October 2023
Gold: Play for Change Award in Life Skills for Doom the Gloom
Toy Industries of Europe · October 2022
The Play for Change Awards celebrate toy makers who help kids confidently navigate the world around them in ways that show respect for themselves, for others and for the planet. The “Doom the Gloom” online safety game was awarded the Gold in the Life Skills category.
Good Design Award for PlayStation 5
Japan Institute of Design Promotion · October 2021
GOOD DESIGN AWARD has been a comprehensive design evaluation and commendation system in Japan since 1957. Companies and designers from both inside and outside Japan participate to enhance the industry or the quality of life through design. G Mark, the symbol of the award, has been widely recognized as a mark of good design.
iF Design Award for PlayStation Gaming User Interface
iF Design Award · April 2021
The PlayStation 5 Gaming System User Interface, developed by my platform planning and management team, was recognized for keeping players more immersed and closer to the game than any other PlayStation® console before, and for providing contextual and lightning-fast interactions without ever leaving the context of the game or application and maintaining persistent access to community, social, and core system features.
Sony Interactive Entertainment Heroes
PlayStation Peers · December 2020
TIME’s Best Inventions: Gaming Revolution in Entertainment for Sony Playstation 5
TIME magazine's 100 Best Inventions of 2020 · November 2020