25+ years shaping design craft and 15 years turning ambiguity, pressure, and broken systems into products and teams that move.
I've spent 25 years in design. Product design is only the second half of that story.
I started teaching college design and drawing courses at 23, while building my own career as a working designer. Over the next 12 years, I moved through advertising, fitness, energy, and in-house marketing teams. I worked as a designer, became a creative director, and spent four years teaching high school design courses along the way.
That first chapter taught me how to make things. How to communicate. How to teach. How to critique work without killing momentum. How to sell an idea to people who don't speak design. And how to operate when there isn't a mature system telling you what to do next.
Then I moved into product design.
For the past 15+ years, I've built design functions from scratch inside organizations that couldn't afford to wait. The titles became Director, Head of Design, and design leadership roles, but the job has remained remarkably consistent: walk into something complicated, figure out what's broken, and make it work.
Usually with no time, no system, and very little room for a wrong call. Pre-funding startups. Post-acquisition platforms. Companies on the edge of collapse. I've done the work in almost every condition except a comfortable one. I've helped close Series A funding through design. I've compressed 90-day onboarding to 9. I've built design systems, products, teams, and operating models where none existed. And I've led without a design team more often than with one, which forced me to learn how to move organizations through engineers, PMs, executives, customers, and the work itself rather than relying on design headcount.
That ability didn't start when I became a product designer.
It started in classrooms, advertising shops, marketing departments, and creative teams. It came from teaching people how to see problems differently, presenting work that had to survive scrutiny, switching industries, learning unfamiliar businesses, and figuring out how design creates value outside the walls of a design organization.
Most of the companies I've worked at didn't exit in a way that makes a recruiter's eyes light up. That's the honest part of this career.
I've spent it at inflection-point companies—the kind that needed someone to build the design function, rethink the product, or create enough clarity to get to whatever came next. Some made it further than others.
The company names aren't Stripe.
The results are still real.
Connect on LinkedIn →A complete record of building products, systems, teams, and the conditions for all three.
The interview question used to be walk me through your portfolio. I think it's becoming talk me through your toolkit.
Design is a team sport.
I had the chance to work closely with Taylor Dollarhide for 3 years when he was at Orderful. We collaborated day-to-day on product features, and I really valued having him as a counterpart. Taylor often challenged my perspective positively, he approached problems differently, which pushed us toward more creative and effective solutions. He cared deeply about user experience, which showed in the way he turned complex product challenges into simple, intuitive designs. He had a great balance between providing the design vision while also offering practical iterations that kept the team moving forward fast. As the only designer on the team, Taylor took on a leadership role in building our entire design system. His work streamlined cross-collaboration between product, engineering, and other internal stakeholders. It also set a strong foundation for the designers who would come after him. Taylor was simply great to work with, collaborative, open-minded, and a genuinely cool teammate. I'd love to have the opportunity to collaborate with him again.
Working with Taylor for two years at Orderful was really great. As the head of Product Design, Taylor demonstrated exceptional vision and a profound understanding of our users' needs. He led constructive product design sessions, where he invested time in carefully explaining design decisions and their reasoning. His impact was not just felt on our product offerings, but also is reflected in our team and certainly left an impression on me.
I'm fairly sure that Taylor is magic. His approach to UX yields the perfect blend of form and function, taking into account business goals, aesthetics, utility, and usability. His experience and his hunger for constant improvement has given him a perspective and a decision-making framework that is the best I've ever seen in action. He's a pleasure to work with and his work ethic is unparalleled. I would jump at the chance to be on his team every time.
Taylor was the first design hire at CirrusMD where he quickly and positively inserted himself as the leader of our product design process, brand direction, online presence, universal design language, and company culture, always leading by reiterating the importance of design in any initiative. His academic, thoughtful approach to building rad things was a great addition to our product engineering team. I would gladly hire or work with Taylor again.
Taylor's patience, willingness to educate, openness to diverse perspectives, and consistent, always-steady manner made me and my team better marketers. His partnership helped both our teams bring incredible value to our overall organization, evident in our digital design, brand identity, and thoughtful marketing influence on product launches. Taylor's thoughtfulness, empathy, and commitment to design thinking ensure that anything he touches will resonate powerfully with the intended end-user. If you are looking to build a human-centered team or product, Taylor is an essential ingredient to your equation.
I had the pleasure of working closely with Taylor during our time at Orderful, where he was our Head of Product Design while I handled product marketing. When we went through a major rebrand, Taylor jumped in to help with marketing resources and honestly became one of our most valuable players throughout the entire process. What I loved about working with Taylor was how naturally he could think strategically about problems outside his usual scope, he didn't just provide design support, he really understood the bigger picture and helped us figure out how to keep our brand consistent across marketing materials and the actual product experience. Taylor's work ethic is impressive. He created dozens of sales decks, one-pagers, event booth designs, web pages, and all sorts of marketing materials while still keeping up with his regular product design work. What really stood out to me was how Taylor approached everything with the team's long-term success in mind, he built resources that actually taught the rest of us how to keep building on what he started. Taylor brings together strategic thinking, creative talent, and genuine teamwork in a way that's pretty rare. Any team would be lucky to have him.
Taylor is the most complete designer with whom I have ever had the pleasure of collaborating and building a product suite. A talented designer is not only the primary voice of the user, but an individual who can generate a vision for a product suite while ensuring the needs of the business, management of technical and business risk, and engineering wherewithal to make their vision a reality. Taylor can handle all of these requirements with aplomb. What he has done is nothing short of exceptional, and he is poised to take on any challenge that is put in front of him.
Taylor is the best of the best. Certainly the most talented Visual Designer I have ever worked with and managed. I've enjoyed watching Taylor tinker in his flow-state making magic happen. I managed Taylor at STARZ and recruited him to Acumen (Sling TV) where he advanced the UX and design systems.
As the leader of the design team, Taylor is organized, supportive, and generous with his time and attention. He guides his direct reports from inception to the finish line with encouragement and levity. Taylor is also a talented product strategist, which directly impacts the company's strategy and roadmap. I experienced firsthand Taylor's ability to innovate and accurately predict trends while guiding our team's future thinking. I especially appreciate his focus on process and communication, he implemented steps and procedures to guarantee we were producing validated, high-quality deliverables in the right cadence with product and engineering.
Current ventures built hands-on, from positioning through product and launch.
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If you're hiring a senior design leader, scaling a product through an inflection point, or need a design executive who operates at the edge, I'd like to connect. 25 years of turning chaos into outcomes, across every industry that matters.
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