Resume


Professional Summary

Kadie is a strategic, empathetic, multidisciplinary designer with 8+ years experience delivering innovative enterprise and B2B solutions. She has designed over 14 digital experiences in the last 5 years for clients in various industries, with proven success in leading the end-to-end design process, delivering user-centric designs, and building resilient design teams.

FOUNDER & DESIGN CONSULTANT | 2019 TO Present

K/CO DESIGN, CHICAGO, IL

Manages and executes projects for small businesses and start-up clients with branding, product strategy, UX/UI, website build, and marketing needs. Specializing in responsive website and light-application design and build using Wix Studio Editor.

  • Redesigned website for Bushfire Kitchen, a fast-casual restaurant in California, to meet WCAG AA requirements, avoiding a costly, impending lawsuit.

  • Refined the product roadmap for a fashion-focused marketplace startup through interactive workshop; designed and built a completely responsive web application to test initial hypotheses using Wix Studio.

  • Designed and built a responsive website for a Chicagoland restaurant and bar, including a job application and party inquiry form that routes directly to the owner, improving response times.

LEAD PRODUCT DESIGNER | 2022 TO 2023

MVMNT (Series A), CHICAGO, IL

  • Led the end-to-end design function for a B2B Logistics and FinTech platform, establishing processes and standards for design research and UX/UI; scaled team from 1 to 4 designers in 6 months.

  • Ensured consistent brand identity across three web-based apps by creating an accessible, atomic-based design system in Figma and hosted in Storybook, reducing design and engineering turn times.

  • Identified critical barriers to product-market fit for the FinTech Payments product through user research, allowing the company to redirect resources to more promising opportunities.

  • Facilitated discovery sessions, weekly design critiques, and team retros to ensure alignment across the distributed team.

  • Provided guidance and feedback on design artifacts (user flows, wireframes, mock-ups) while while maintaining a collaborative and supportive team environment.

EXPERIENCE DESIGN CONSULTANT | 2018 TO 2022

INSPIRE11, CHICAGO, IL

  • Led the design work stream as a player-coach on multiple enterprise digital strategy & transformation engagements, translating complex and ambiguous business requirements into intuitive end-user experiences.

  • Staffed on lean delivery teams as Product Analyst and UX/UI Designer responsible for user research and requirements gathering, user story management, experience flows and prototyping, QA testing, and scrum ceremony orchestration.

  • Collaborated with cross-functional firm leadership to ensure engagements were properly scoped and delivered.

Select Project Experience: Trailer Manufacturer / Business + Digital Strategy

  • Facilitated workshops with C-Suite to re-align on corporate mission and vision based on Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle model (Start with “Why”)

  • Organized and conducted 4 weeks of interviews with over 40 employees, customers, and distributors to better understand the client’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunity areas.

  • Utilized Voice of the Customer methodology and financial analysis to evaluate customer perception, market position, and profitability of each P&L.

  • Delivered recommendations for increasing throughput including process & technology improvements and product line refinement.

Select Project Experience: National Insurance Provider / Customer Experience Strategy + Digital Transformation

  • Identified opportunities for the client to improve operations and customer experience by conducting 20+ interviews, a competitive analysis, technology audit, and operational process evaluation.

  • Developed a strategic roadmap, prioritized based on LOE and expected ROI of each initiative, estimated to save millions in OPEX spend over 5 years.

  • Successfully designed and launched 4 new digital platforms, including an agent onboarding solution that reduced turn times from days to 24 hours, a direct-to-consumer experience to test market viability, and a modern policy portal with 1000+ users.

  • Created personas, journey maps, user flows, and prototypes to visually communicate design insights and requirements, helping engineering teams understand user goals and provide clear standards for development.

  • Adapted new brand guidelines for the client’s first component library and (accessible) design system, including data visualizations for increasing transparency of agent commission pay.

Selected Project Experience: Last Mile Logistics Provider / Transportation Management Software (Web) & Driver App (Mobile)

  • Owned the Product work stream during the re-plaforming of business critical software for the logistics function of a $1.7B client.

  • Wrote user stories, provided design feedback, performed QA, monitored delivery progress, managed releases, and orchestrated all scrum ceremonies.

  • Designed and launched a proprietary algorithm for automated dispatching to improve operational efficiency and increase employee satisfaction.

  • Monitored app store reviews of the mobile app for user feedback to identify potential bugs and enhancement opportunities.

Selected Project Experience: Industrials Manufacturer / Customer Experience Strategy

  • Organized and led customer interviews, synthesizing research to identify pain points and opportunities along the customer sales journey.

  • Created storyboards to communicate the future state vision used to gather buy-in for investment in digital experiences.

  • Built a roadmap aligned with client needs and budget constraints, prioritizing initiatives with highest impact and lowest effort.

Selected Project Experience: Global Insurance Company / Big Data Platform UX/UI Design

  • Organized and led UX/UI design work for a complex data management tool used by Enterprise Data Managers and Data Scientists to standardize and translate large amounts of data when developing ML/AI models.

  • Created user flows and prototypes in Figma to communicate design requirements to engineering, working within the previously established navigational structure and component library to create a consistent experience.

BUSINESS & SYSTEMS INTEGRATION CONSULTANT | 2015 TO 2018

ACCENTURE, CHICAGO, IL

  • Worked on a varying enterprise technology projects for clients in Natural Resources and InfoSec.

  • Facilitated requirements sessions with business stakeholders to understand current state and design future state processes.

  • Developed strong stakeholder management, program management, and written communication skills.

Selected Experience: Fortune 100 Utilities Company

  • Conducted requirements sessions with business stakeholders during a large-scale business transformation engagement ($50M+) and designed future-state business processes for Benefits, Time-Keeping, and Payroll teams.

  • Produced a systems integration/consolidation playbook consisting of proven best practices expected to drive efficiency and cost savings across future acquisitions.

Selected Experience: National Utility Provider

  • Recovered $300,000 in overcharged resources for an IT Contract Management team by auditing their process and implementing a custom, manageable Excel-based tool.

  • Served as the primary project controller for 16 contracts during a $40M+ systems separation engagement, working closely with project leads to draft contracts and staffing plans, ensuring forecasts aligned with work estimations, teams were properly staffed, and all delivery requirements were met.

BUSINESS ANALYST INTERN | SUMMER 2014

KOHL’S, MENOMONEE FALLS, WI

  • Gained understanding of the retail industry and omni-channel challenges as a Technical Business Analyst in the Merchandising and Product Development division.

  • Collaborated with a team of interns and presented an innovative technical solution to senior level management designed to enhance the in-store retail experience.

  • Gathered business requirements and redesigned an internal Google form for the e-Commerce team, allowing the department to more effectively manage product samples.


Education

MASTER’S OF EXPERIENCE DESIGN | 2019 TO 2021

DEPAUL UNIVERSITY, CHICAGO, IL

Graduated with Distinction (GPA: 4.0)

An Experience Design degree focuses on human-factors research, social influences of technology, innovation and design thinking, and tactical UX/UI experience.

BACHELOR’S OF INFORMATICS | 2011 TO 2015

INDIANA UNIVERSITY, BLOOMINGTON, IN

Minors: Human-Centered Computing, Business, Spanish (GPA: 3.7)