I build and lead UX design and research teams
From hands-on designer to leading teams
I'm a UX leader with 15+ years of UX design and research experience, including 3+ years of team leadership. At Anaconda, Inc., I grew from Sr. UX Designer to Staff Designer to Manager of UX Research. Along the way I led a redesign that brought an enterprise platform onto one design system, facilitated cross-functional workshops that moved teams from open ideas to a recommended direction, grew a UX Research team from 1 to 4 with the operations to support it, and set my team's guardrails for bringing AI into the UX process.
"Sally pairs a sunny disposition that lifts a whole team with a consistent competence that shows up in every detail of her work. No drama, no posturing — just consistently excellent output."
— Elize, Engineering Manager
My Core Competencies
Team Leadership & Management
Grew and managed a UX Research team from 1 to 4. Built onboarding processes, working agreements, and team goals where none existed before.
Research & Design Strategy & Operations
Set UX research strategy and operations org-wide, wrote the Full UX Design Process document with my team (later adapted for AI workflows), and built a UX Research Team Operating Playbook to keep design and research decisions documented and defensible.
Talent Development
Turned a struggling designer into a product-owning UX lead through hands-on mentorship: weekly structure, direct feedback, and a deliberate hand-off of ownership as her confidence grew.
UX Design Leadership & Facilitation
Facilitated 3+ cross-functional sprints and workshops, moving design, PM, and engineering from open ideas to an aligned recommendation in days instead of weeks.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Partnered directly with PMs, EMs, engineers, research and other teams to shape design decisions together, including driving product unification work with product management and running pairing sessions with engineering to close the design-to-code gap.
AI in the UX Process
Led my team in setting shared guardrails for AI: AI assists, people decide. In my own work, I use it to get from a brief to wireframes or a clickable prototype in hours.