With over twenty years in design, the most important thing I've learned is that great leadership stays close to the work.

I moved into leadership early — scaling teams across corporate and startup environments. As responsibilities grew, time on the tools shrank. At one point I was maybe 5% hands-on. A few years ago, after being impacted by redundancies, I made a deliberate choice: go back to the craft. I flipped to 90% on the tools, and it's been the most rejuvenating stretch of my career.

When you're in the work, you understand the problem space through constraints, not slide decks. You see where the design system falls short. You learn how your team actually thinks. And your feedback sharpens the work instead of creating churn. This is what helicopter leadership misses.

That said, you can't be in the weeds on everything. The skill is flexibility — moving between the 1-foot view and the 10,000-foot view based on what the moment demands.

How I think about design leadership

Over two decades, I've come to see design leadership as four disciplines that you're constantly rebalancing.

1. Creative direction; setting the vision and holding the quality bar.

2. Business alignment; connecting design strategy to commercial outcomes cross-functionally.

3. People leadership; recruiting, coaching, and building cultures where designers thrive.

4. Design operations; the project management and coordination that keeps it all running.

How I lead

• Coach to the team; hands-on mentorship over top-down direction.

• Diplomat across functions; building the trust that lets design have real impact.

• Champion upward; advocating for design's value at the leadership table.

• Architect for scale; building the systems and frameworks that let quality hold as teams grow.

Is it a fit?

I'm most energised by roles that demand both strategic altitude and proximity to the craft — whether as an embedded design leader, a fractional partner, or through Fullflow as an extended team.

If that resonates, let's talk.