Kristen is an entrepreneurial, experience design oriented leader with a specialty in working with digital product teams to deliver strategic outcomes, and has done so across various industries. Most recently, she served as the Senior Director of Global Experience Design at Johnson Controls, a leading sustainability as a business company in the smart buildings sector. In this role, Kristen led an emerging experience design team facing product scaling challenges and low design maturity in the broader organization. She has experience successfully scaling teams and improving speed to market, while fostering an environment in which innovation and agility can thrive across the enterprise.
Kristen is driven to make a positive impact on the world and finds joy in solving complex problems and providing strategic solutions. In her tenure at Johnson Controls, she redesigned the team’s engagement model to better align designers with their supported products, resulting in a transparent view of support costs and securing additional funding to grow the team by 40%. She also led a global generative research study that established an experience model for the company’s flagship digital product. This initiative led to the redesign of a core product with projections of significant ARR from increased sales and retention rates.
Kristen is a self-starting, self-motivating, and goal-oriented risk taker. From her start-up, chief of staff experiences, and research and development role, she see technology as an instrument to increase value exponentially and enjoys taking the big picture view, then diving deeper to understand the human and systems impacts. In co-founding her financial literacy startup, Kristen saw the opportunity in dual value propositions – one for the retail banking customer, to bring context to their spending, and the other to small banks, to reach, teach, and retain new to wealth customers who often leave due to unmet technology expectations. In her research and development role, she researched emerging technologies and their impact on users, to imagine the future and bring that to life faster than ever before. As Chief of Staff, she focused on fostering an environment that authentically embraced agility and innovation. Kristen is highly motivated by identifying and scaling technological solutions in a way that improves lives. She has an action-bias, which allows her to quickly narrow in on solutions, even in ambiguous situations.
Kristen is always in search of new experiences, regardless of role, and is dedicated to acquiring new knowledge and skills. She has a passion for learning and thrives in opportunities that allow her to be creative in taking a concept from theoretical to practical application, which is why she enjoys innovating new business models, strengthening business agility, and owning something from start to finish.
Kristen is a native Michigander, and recent transplant to Pennsylvania although she’s lived in other states and countries. She is an avid outdoors person, and mom of twins and a Labradoodle. When not in the office, she can usually be found outside with her husband and family.
