Ian.

I lead product organizations with a design background — which means I've spent years doing more than design. I've led product. I've led engineering. I've hired, scaled, reorganized, and shipped. I've built departments from nothing and helped others understand why their existing systems weren't scaling.

My career started in craft: UX, visual design, front-end development. I loved the work. But what pulled me upward were the organizational problems underneath the design problems. Why was this decision so hard to make? Why did the handoff keep breaking down? Why did the team keep shipping the wrong thing?

At Copperleaf, I got to answer those questions at scale. Over seven years I built a design function that grew from 3 to 22 people, helping the company go from a scrappy team shipping one product to a $1B CAD IPO with three. I learned what it means to design an organization: the hiring decisions, the cultural norms, the processes that scale and the ones that don't.

Energized by people, driven by ideas, and unreasonably convinced that the right conversation can solve most things. I try to use that energy to create environments where people feel genuinely safe to take risks, say what they think, and do the best work of their careers.

Outside of work: you'll find me outside in the woods with my family (Arlo, Audra, and Deborah), cooking something that takes longer than it should, or facilitating a conversation that was better for having someone at the front of the room.