At Datapay, my leadership includes JTBD‑led discovery and market framing to keep AI‑accelerated work grounded in real customer value.
At FarmIQ, I guided a diverse team through significant change, building the “operating system” that connected design to product strategy and strengthened our ways of working.
🧭 Leadership Philosophy
Create clarity: Make the problem, principles, and decision criteria unambiguous.
Align the room: Bring design, product, engineering, and SMEs into one decision loop for faster, more confident momentum.
Design the system: Codify how we work (charters, rituals, and measures), so great outcomes become repeatable.
Anchor to value: Use Jobs‑to‑Be‑Done and market framing to focus on the highest‑value opportunities for our product.
Grow people: Build psychological safety and shared expectations so teams thrive together.
⚙️ Operating Principles
North Star First: Connect company strategy to a concrete design narrative before roadmaps.
Principles Over Preferences: Resolve debates with design principles, not opinions.
One Conversation: Align design, product, engineering, and SMEs in the same cadence.
Make It Repeatable: Use charters, rituals, templates, and reviews that users and teams can rely on.
Measure Learning Early: Use JTBD, SME validation, and Job Maps to de‑risk decisions so teams can place bigger, evidence‑backed bets.
🧪 Strategic Playbook (How I Lead)
JTBD‑led discovery & market canvases to validate opportunities and prioritise the highest‑value jobs. (Datapay)
Design Team Charter that defined mission, roles, values, agreements, and measures—reviewed quarterly. (FarmIQ)
Alignment workshops tying strategy‑on‑a‑page to roadmaps and delivery. (FarmIQ)
Personality‑informed collaboration to build trust, safety, and decision velocity. (FarmIQ)
Leadership in Context
Datapay 🧑💻💰
Datapay 🧑💻💰
In a fast‑moving, AI‑accelerated environment, my focus has been on grounding pace in validated customer value. I’ve led the creation and validation of JTBD job maps and market frames with payroll SMEs to ensure our decisions target unmet needs and outcome‑driven opportunities.
Leadership highlights so far:
Established a JTBD‑first discovery approach validated with domain experts.
Turned ambiguous spaces into clear artefacts (market canvas, job maps) that anchor prioritisation.
Embedded this framing into product and engineering planning rhythms to link decisions with strategy.
Partnering with payroll SMEs to validate Job Maps and ensure we prioritise unmet needs that drive outcome‑driven innovation.
Leadership in Context: FarmIQ 🚜📱
I led a small, diverse team (two product designers and a graphic designer) and established the Design Team Charter, a living framework covering mission, roles, values, collaboration agreements, and success measures. I introduced alignment workshops and personality‑informed collaboration to strengthen psychological safety and accelerate decisions.
Leadership highlights:
Translated FarmIQ’s strategy‑on‑a‑page into a practical design narrative and design principles.
Translated FarmIQ’s strategy‑on‑a‑page into a practical design narrative and design principles.
Operationalised how the team works, using quarterly reviews to stay aligned and adaptive.
Built trust and communication through shared working agreements and working‑style insights.
The Design Team, our roles & strengths
Our co-created values & agreements
Our Design Principles
📈 Outcomes (What Changed)
Clarity & Confidence: Shared principles and JTBD framing reduced discovery time and improved decision quality across teams.
Alignment at Speed: One‑conversation cadences and cross‑functional workshops led to faster, more confident trade‑offs.
Repeatable Delivery: Charters and rituals made collaboration predictable and resilient through organisational change.
Example: Co-Creating Team Objectives
I facilitated workshops to align our team’s purpose with FarmIQ’s strategy‑on‑a‑page. This helped us define a design mission rooted in our design principles and ensured every designer had a voice in shaping our collective goals.
We created OKRs that measure our progress weekly and present them each quarter during Seasonal Planning, making our design leadership work visible across the company.
FarmIQ's purpose and vision, led us to create our Design Team's Mission
Our Design Team objectives & measures of success I presented at Spring 24 Seasonal Planning
Example: Implementing Design Consistency Practices
To improve collaboration, visibility, and consistency, I introduced recurring team rituals:
Design Jams (3x weekly) for shared problem‑solving.
Design Team Meetups for updates, alignment, and visual design discussions.
Design Libraries that tighten brand consistency and elevate quality across every touchpoint—from the product interface to the website and marketing collateral—developed in partnership with our Graphic Designer.
Design Jams (3x weekly) for shared problem‑solving.
Design Team Meetups for updates, alignment, and visual design discussions.
Design Libraries that tighten brand consistency and elevate quality across every touchpoint—from the product interface to the website and marketing collateral—developed in partnership with our Graphic Designer.
These practices reduced friction, improved cohesion, and created a shared sense of ownership.
🧾 Selected Evidence & Further Reading
Leading the Design Team: cultivating an inclusive culture and establishing our operating system, including our charter, rituals, and alignment practices. (This page)
Helping Farmers Thrive: Creating Their Essential App — product leadership in a complex domain. See project →
Moving from a Design Library to a Design System — systemisation, scale, and consistency. See project →
JTBD & Market Canvas Validation, grounding AI‑sped delivery in real jobs and value. Context →
Current Role — Lead Product Designer for Datapay. LinkedIn →
Work completed whilst at FarmIQ