brandy collins
I've spent nearly 30 years working where design meets business, technology, and organizational change. What draws me to this work isn't design on its own, it's building the systems, teams, and operating models that let good design actually take hold inside an organization, especially one in the middle of change. I've done this through a pandemic, company-wide restructurings, aggressive M&A, and once, a company's collapse. What I've learned is that the work worth doing is usually the work that survives disruption.
product & design leader
Design's role inside organizations keeps shifting, and AI is accelerating that shift, changing how products get built and how design teams operate. Design leaders increasingly need to work at the intersection of business strategy, technology, and organizational design, not just craft. That intersection is where I've spent most of my career.
My strengths are building the operating models, systems, and culture that let a design organization function well, especially under pressure: modernizing how a company makes product decisions, building Design Systems as durable infrastructure, and creating the conditions where a team can do its best work through a reorg, an acquisition, or worse.
RELATIONSHIPS// I build relationships and processes across Product, Engineering, Marketing, Sales, and Operations that hold up under pressure, not just when things are going well.
TEAM BUILDING// I've rearchitected design organizations and built new ones from the ground up, at a Fortune 500 company, an airline, a fast-scaling startup, and a company mid-IPO. Success looks like a team that's clear on where it's headed and durable enough to survive a reorg.
DESIGN CULTURE// I work closely with highly technical partners to build a shared understanding of what design adds to the outcome, not as an add-on, but as part of how the business actually makes decisions.
ACCOUNTABILITY// Accountability starts with clear expectations, and it includes me. I hold myself to the same standard on delivery that I hold my team to.
FLEXIBILITY// I've led fully remote, globally distributed teams, and I've rebuilt operating models more than once when the ones in place stopped fitting the moment. Staying the course matters. So does knowing when to change it.
Don't just take my word for it →