Experience Highlights

I've been lucky to work at various organizations where I participated in many challenging but fun projects. Each project is unique and comes with its own set of challenges. The web is always evolving and we find new and often better solutions for the problems we're presented with. I believe that we as designers and developers must have as much passion in continuously learning as we do designing and developing. Having genuine empathy for our users allows us to commit to leveraging all standards, best practices, methodologies, tools and more to create the best possible user experience.

I also believe in unrestricted cross team collaboration. Working together, supporting each other in this common goal only increases our chances of success.

Valiant Solutions

Valiant Solutions is a provider of cloud-based Payroll and Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions. My role required me to leverage many of the skills and experiences I have gained over my career. I can cite several individual highlights, but for now I'll highlight the combination of my many simulataneous responsiblities which focused around massive redesign and UI/UX infrastructure development efforts. Here are some of those responsibilities.

UI/UX Redesign

Valiant's HCM platform is comprised of several applications such as "payroll processing" and "time and labor management". Until my arrival, the UI/UX design was led by the CTO/software engineering leads. I began by learning about each application and the platform as a whole. From there, I had to understand current architecture and break down workflows to individual/simplest tasks.

I also took on the task of redesigning the corporate (public) site was largely unengaging and the content needed to be updated.

UX Research

Up until this point I had limited exposure and practice in user experience research. It's an area I always wanted to gain more practical experience and formal application in. I was able to gain a deep understanding of various user feedback methods, setting goals for the data/feedback was most valuable, understanding how to acquire and apply metrics data, and how to take all of it and effectively communicate UX design enhancement recommendations based accordingly.

Building a Team

I was also tasked with building a team of UI/UX designers which would allow us to keep up with increased development requests. This included creating and maintaining capacity plans, resource planning, assigning projects/tasks, mentoring and more. I helped bring in talented people for other departments such as a new Art Director.

Style and Patterns Library

As we were redesigning all applications, workflows and platform elements, it was vital to catalog existing styles and patterns and start building a new style guide and design pattern library. A consistent UI/UX throughout our applications/SaaS platform would be essential in providing a conistent and enjoyable user experience.

Alignment with Marketing/Corporate Communications


I stressed the importance of maintaining UI/UX alignment between our applications and our corporate communications. I made sure I kept a good relationship with the Marketing team and synced up with them continuously.

Broadridge Financial

Broadridge is the leading provider of investor communications and technology-driven solutions for wealth management, asset management and capital markets firms. They help clients drive operational excellence to manage risk, accelerate growth and deliver real business value. Thier technology-driven solutions power the entire investment lifecycle, enabling clients to successfully manage the complexity and operational requirements of today's capital markets. Broadridge is at the forefront of multi-channel communications, strengthening clients' capabilities to communicate with their clients and investors and meet regulatory requirements.

UI/UX Redesign

Very shortly after I started at Broadridge, I was the only UI/UX designer-developer for the ICS (Investor Communication Services) division. Prior to my arrival, the UI/UX design for the older applications (which were most of the ICS apps) were led by the software engineers.

Financial applications are typically complex and data-intensive, and the interfaces and workflows unfortunately mirroed this. I started with a smaller application and began reducing some "noise", allowing content to breathe by adding some white space, adding some warmth by introducing some images, iconography, better font styles and coloring.

These relatively basic changes resulted in a significant improvement as noted by the product owner and other stakeholders. Other business units took notice and began asking for similar enhancements to their applications.

Their excitement and enthusiasm was a great feeling for me, and it was the beginning of many significant improvements and additions such as building/managing a UI/UX team; defining standards and policies; learning new design approaches such as responsive web design, rapid prototyping with Bootstrap, engagement practices with software engineers to integrate UI/UX elements into production, working in Java and .Net environments and much more.

Building a Team

Almost immediately after I joined, I was the single UI resource for ICSOL applications. I was quickly able to prove the value of having an internal UI resource. This led to increased project work and subsequently increased resources.

Define Standards & Policies

The overarching problem of various applications developed in silos which resulted in a lack of consistency between any 2 applications from a pool of more than 20 applications clearly highlighted an urgent need to create UI/UX design standards, policies, design patterns, style guides and more.

This in part, led me to develop the first "Design and Development Guide" (aka "DDG") to maintain a consistentcy in current and future project. This was later used as the style guide and design approach for the ICS Portal project's design and development plan.

Portal Development

During my last year and a half at Broadridge, I led the design process and the UI/UX team to support a brand new portal for "ICS", Investor Communication Services. This multi-million dollar project was the largest and most complex to date for my team and many of the software engineers invloved.

Dowling College

Dowling College was a private college located on Long Island's south shore in Oakdale, NY. From 1999 - 2000, I served as the Web Administrator here and was once again tasked with redesigning the entire College site, including sections for each department.

One of my career highlights occurred at Dowling College's "Dowling Institute", which was the "continuing education" school on the Oakdale campus. The commercial web was still in its infancy, arguable a toddler at this time. As such, there was a need to add courses related to "web design and development". I offered to develop a certificate program for Dowling College and be its primary teacher. My "Web Site Development Certificate Program" was first offered in the spring of 2000.

This program was comprised of 5 separate courses including "Web Site Design", "Web Site Development", "HTML I", "HTML II" and "Intro to DHTML". Classes filled up quickly and for the rest of the year I enjoyed teaching many people eager to learn how to design a site, code a site according to a design and add some basic interactivity using a fairly new language called JavaScript.

I still have one of the original brochures that announced my program. To view the PDF version of it, click on the image to the right.