I’m one hundred percent, totally, unquestionably a generalist. I’m not the strongest visual designer, although sometimes I surprise myself, I’m much more of an interaction designer. I code, and I love it, but I’m positively not the best at it. I love user research and am well-versed in its methodologies, especially quick and dirty methods that let me more quickly get to other parts of the design process I enjoy more. I love working with others to develop and focus the vision of products and services. Lastly, I love people — getting to know them, understanding them, working with them, and above all, enabling them. Like I said, I’m pretty much a generalist.
I am a Principal Product Designer at Podium, where I have the opportunity to work on a product that serves small businesses across many verticals and helps them make the most out of their customer interactions. More to come.
As the Principal Product Designer at Apollo, I get the opportunity to work on GraphQL development tools and cloud services. My responsibilities range from establishing a product design discipline to getting our design system off the ground. Additionally, I work closely with my colleagues to improve our product development processes, and of course, design web interfaces.
Adam is the principal designer at Apollo GraphQL. Adam quickly learned the current and future business needs of Apollo and redesigned our entire information architecture. This means he's reimagined how we can use what we have to deliver the most value to our current customers and how we can provide solutions to our future customers. This is all in addition to actually building out designs to improve the look, feel, and behaviors of our entire platform. Adam has done all of this in one year while being the only designer at Apollo; also working with our marketing, sales, developer experience, and open source teams.
Besides being a fantastic person to work with, Adam brings with him a rich and broad set of skills. He has a thoughtfulness and compassion for users every step of the way, whether doing deep user research, product feature design, or building out a company-wide design system, Adam's sensibilities are always rock solid. I appreciate his attention to detail and diligent product skills which have really elevated our software platform. He also has a great respect for technical considerations and engineering trade-offs, which makes him a very engineering-friendly designer to work with. Adam is a person I wouldn't hesitate to put at the center of any design team large or small.
Adam knows what good product development looks like. He set up the company's design system, which is now used across all web properties. He's well versed in design methodologies. He has excellent taste and a strong intuition for what visually feels good in a product. If he's working on something, you know that what he produces will be high quality and well thought through and that you don't have to worry about it, which is honestly very nice. In addition to all that, Adam is extremely empathetic and knows how to make people feel comfortable and build good team rapport. He's an excellent sounding board and has helped to mentor and provide advice to many folks on our team on things that range far beyond their design sensibilities to their careers as a whole.
As a Sr. Product Design Manager at Slack, I’m focused on design process development, hiring, and people management. I often find myself playing a number of different roles as a Product Design Manager, such as mentor, friend, bearer of bad news, career advisor, and proud colleague. Additionally, I work cross-functionally to develop and implement aspects of our evolving product development process. On the product side, I partner with Product Management on product direction, priorities, and execution.
If I had to sum up Adam in a few words it would be hard-working, honest, reliable, compassionate, and funny. I could turn to him to work out design problems and respect and trust his feedback, but I also learned so much about myself and my working style. Adam is one of the most genuine and empathetic people I’ve ever worked with and without a doubt made me a better person and employee through his time here at Slack. At a team level, he was able to build and sustain a very close-knit group of people and become a model manager for other teams at our company. On a personal level, being a female in tech can sometimes be quite challenging, but he was always there to listen, support, and escalate any issues that came up. I think that level of reliability and open-mindedness are “must-have” skills for any managers I have in the future.
Adam is one of my favorite and closest partners at Slack! Adam obsessed about the pixels as much as he cared about every designer on the team. He was there to coach us through all the ups and downs. Under Adam, the design team(s) bonded and flourished across San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, and New York. It was an exerted effort to invest in culture, camaraderie, and most importantly a joy of working... especially to have sense of humor under pressure. Adam is honest. He is a great designer to collaborate with and he is also the manager you’d go to commiserate failures as well as celebrate wins. He has a way of telling me that I’m being an idiot (which happened a lot) and come off totally fair. Nor he would hesitate to go to bat for what he believed was right and always managed to navigate difficult situations with so much grace.
My role as the Senior Lead Designer and sole designer in the Research and Development team involved being a user researcher, visual designer, interaction designer, and product thinker across all projects in the Research team, of which there were many at one time.
As a designer, Adam’s contribution to our research team was essential; his clarity of thought around design practices was vital to every step of our process. And with our projects launching from solid, customer-focused foundations, Adam’s visual design gave the prototypes a clean, focused look that really let the core innovative ideas shine through. Adam brings an uncanny inquisitiveness and clarity of thought to everything he touches. With Adam in the room, you quickly learn that just going with the flow will never be good enough. He will start by asking why things work a certain way, and then through clear, collaborative interrogation of the issue, the team can explain its goal/hypothesis alongside the focused plan to achieve/test it.
Adam is a team player with intention behind every decision he makes. Well thought out decision making in his design and his management skills make sure customer and employees have an outstanding experience. It was an honor working with Adam and I hope to again in the future.
I started at Palantir as a Product Designer and quickly moved to a Product Design Lead role where I lead projects and people working on many different products. In such a dynamic role, I found myself playing the typical generalist designer role where I created and led the first design initiated project to become an official engineering project. As a manager, I found myself playing the mentor, friend, bearer of bad news, career advisor, and proud colleague.
Adam is an excellent product designer. He has the perfect blend of logic, creativity, and systems-thinking — and his empathetic ability and communication skills are incomparable. This blend of talent and ability also makes him a truly excellent manager. He engenders a deep sense of trust, acknowledgment, and attentiveness with the people he leads, borne from a strong sense of personal and professional responsibility to care for —and elevate— those around him. I can’t wait to work with Adam again, and would do so at any opportunity.
Adam continues to be one of the best people I've ever worked with, even as I meet new people and see new things. Even among several brilliant design contributions to our project, I think the best thing he ever did was inspire me to really see the importance of great design. I'll never forget the things I learned from working with him, and they will always be a part of the foundation of how I do my work.
Have you ever worked with someone that you trust so completely that you yourself feel elevated and empowered in their presence? That is Adam to me. Adam the professional, the enabler, the fuel to the flame. In addition to being kind and charming, Adam is expert in everything from design research to interaction design to visual design to communication and collaboration to design process. Adam solved more problems for me than I could possibly count. Every conversation was a eureka moment. If you are in the absolute privileged position of working with Adam, give him the reigns. He will steer you right.
Principal Product DesignerAdam is an AMAZING designer. His nose for design craft/execution is impeccable, but he doesn't lose the forest for the trees — his thoughts on product vision and strategy are insightful, and he's shaped and reshaped how we think about many critical projects at Palantir. Adam is also an excellent source of mentorship and critique, and a beloved lead. He leaves a permanent impact on Palantir's products, processes, and people, and will be sorely missed.
As a Senior User Experience Designer, I collaborated closely with engineers, product managers, and fellow designers to elevate the user experience of GoToAssist, GoToMyPC, and worked on concepts for a brand new GoToMeeting experience. My work spanned across many platforms including the web, desktop (Mac & PC), mobile.
I had the pleasure of working with Adam at Citrix between 2011 and 2013. Adam is not only a great interaction designer, but he is an excellent visual designer and front-end developer. He deeply understands design and software development. He works well with engineers, product teams and senior stakeholders. He thinks about the customer or end-user always and as a result his work is elegant, thought through across all platforms and delightful.
Here’s why I recommend Adam: I recommend Adam because he loves design as a craft. He is a craftsman. He cares deeply about details that many other designers don’t even see. He consistently goes far beyond simply "good enough" because he is internally driven to create outstanding user experiences that delight people. Every screen, every transition, every pixel.
Adam is a tremendously talented experience designer with skills ranging from UX research and design, to product ownership and front-end development. Most of all however, he is a problem-solver. His wonderful design sensibilities and technical acumen allow him to bring his vision to life - and he has single-handedly changed the course of non-user centered and development-driven projects on numerous occasions. He also truly understands the importance of the mobile landscape and its opportunities, especially with products on the iOS platform. Overall, Adam’s inquisitive nature, genuine passion for creating compelling experiences, and work ethic are second to none. He is a committed team player, dependable, and detail-oriented; not to mention driven and yet incredibly humble.
I constantly sought Adam’s counsel and review during my projects. His intimate knowledge of Mobile design helped us pave the way for our mobile apps at Citrix Online. He is a great teacher and often challenged me and others to think differently about how to approach a solution.
If for some reason, you want to learn even more about my work history, like the time I started a company with a couple of fellow graduate students or the time I worked as a user experience researcher, you can check out nearly every role I’ve played on my LinkedIn profile.
