I’m a designer, a manager, a leader, and a systems thinker.
Together, these perspectives shape how I understand problems, support people, and create the conditions for people to grow, teams to thrive, and strong work to drive meaningful outcomes.
I call my approach Enablement Leadership: helping people do their best work while creating the clarity, accountability, and conditions that allow that work to succeed. I start by understanding what a team needs, what’s getting in its way, and where I can have the greatest impact.
22 years in design, 12+ leading teams, across startups, consulting, and enterprise SaaS, through acquisitions, platform shifts, and zero-to-one enterprise initiatives.
As a designer
I start with customers and their problems. I make sense of complexity, explore before deciding, and care about the quality of what we put into the world. I’m not designing every screen, but I stay close to the work through critique, patterns, systems, and product thinking, so I understand the decisions being made and can ask useful questions when something isn’t working.
“She’s one of the best I know at practicing tough love and giving clear, actionable feedback about the most important lever of a given problem or solution space.”
As a manager
I focus on people, starting with the team that’s already there. I build on complementary strengths, coach designers from early career through senior and staff levels, set clear expectations, give direct feedback, and know when someone needs support versus room to lead. When the team needs to grow, I’ve built the hiring process end to end: defining roles, designing interview loops, running behavioral interviews, and making the call. Strong teams still need the right environment, so I pay attention to the structure, trust, and rituals that let people succeed.
“She created a culture of high trust and candor among the designers she managed.”
As a leader
I create direction and align people around what matters. I translate strategy into design priorities, make the why behind decisions visible, and help teams keep moving when the path is still forming and nobody has all the answers yet.
“Her clear-eyed direction has helped teams like 1Password for MSP accomplish a lot on very short runways.”
As a systems thinker
I look at how people, product, process, and business decisions connect. When something isn’t working, I try not to stop at the visible problem. A product issue might be an ownership problem. Rework might point to a missing conversation upstream.
“She is direct and adept at uncovering the root cause of challenges.”
Colleagues from 1Password and Duo Security, in their own words.
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“After working together at 1Password, what I appreciate most about Val as a design leader is her balance of candor and compassion. She’s one of the best I know at practicing tough love and giving clear, actionable feedback about the most important lever of a given problem or solution space. Her clear-eyed direction has helped teams like 1Password for MSP accomplish a lot on very short runways. Every designer leaves a conversation with Val with their head held just a little bit higher—she cares fiercely for her team and inspires their growth, confidence, enthusiasm for the mission (time to put the cape back on!), and curiosity to try new things like agentic workflows. This, combined with over a decade of experience in IAM & B2B design, makes Val a go-to partner for shaping the durable strategy and vision for organizations of all sizes. I would welcome the opportunity to work with Val anytime.”
I am lucky to have worked with Valerie multiple times over the last 14 years, first at Spredfast (now Khoros) and again at Duo Security. She has been a mentor, a design lead, a coach, and a management peer to me throughout my career.
Valerie brings a clear, strategic perspective. She is direct and adept at uncovering the root cause of challenges. She prioritizes ruthlessly and levels up those around her to be as insightful and decisive as she is. When we worked together at Duo, she emphasized a learning approach to product development, never being too precious with a solution and was willing to pivot in the face of new evidence from customers. Valerie is people-centered, not just in how she builds products, but also in how she leads teams. She created a culture of high trust and candor among the designers she managed.
What I remember most about Valerie is the impact she had on shaping me as a designer. Like many others, I transitioned to product design from another unrelated field. I had a fundamental understanding of design, but it was my mentors, especially Valerie, who helped me translate that knowledge to digital spaces, how to shape user feedback into design recommendations, how to think beyond the next feature release, and how to be the design partner my Product and Engineering peers needed. Valerie was an invaluable sounding board when I transitioned to management, helping me better understand how to be successful in this new role and leverage my innate strengths to show up for my team.
If given the option, I would work with Valerie again, and again, and again to the end of my career. If you are looking to build an experimental, user-focused, results-driven, psychologically-safe design organization, Valerie has the experience and ability to deliver exactly that.
I built this portfolio for you.
It’s where I share a few stories from my work and the principles I lead by, so you can get a feel for what it’s like to work alongside me.
This site is a work in progress, which is true of most things worth doing. One case study is live so far. The rest are still in critique.
Reach out when you’re ready. I’d love to connect.
Curious about the work, the thinking behind it, or what we could do together? I’d love to connect.