After a decade in London and Copenhagen, I've recently come back to Sydney.
My career has gone through a few distinct phases. Early on, I was building breadth through R&D work at Canon's lab exploring mixed reality interfaces, then years across consultancies like Designit, Tigerspike, and Symplicit, working on UX and strategy for clients in finance, energy, travel, and consumer goods. Good training for moving fast across unfamiliar contexts.
The longer chapter was at Pleo, where I joined as the third product designer and stayed five years. The company scaled from 40 to 900+ people and I scaled with it, eventually moving into a design leadership role as the team grew from 4 to 40+. The work contributed to 39% customer growth and 50%+ revenue growth in FY23. But I was deliberate about staying hands-on throughout. Being in a leadership role while still being close to the product was important to me, and navigating that tension is something I learned a lot from.
After that, I made a conscious choice to return to individual contribution. Not a step back, more like a reset. I joined Reshape Biotech as the founding design hire, built the design function from scratch, and led product design for software used by scientists and researchers. Then at TheyDo I worked as a Staff Product Designer on complex data problems, helping large organisations manage journey metrics at scale.
Coming back to IC after years in leadership changes how you work. I think in systems. I care about how teams are set up to do good work. But I'm most effective when I'm close enough to the problem to actually feel it.