Director of UX Design · Riot Games · VALORANT
I lead UX for VALORANT — one of the world's most-played tactical shooters. For over five years I've been building the systems, teams, and strategy that shape how tens of millions of players experience the game, from the heat of a clutch moment to the menus they navigate every day.
I've been a gamer my whole life — from LAN parties in my college dorm to years of raiding in WoW and FFXIV with friends and family. I still play almost every day. That history isn't incidental to how I lead; it's foundational. I know what it means to invest real time and care into a game, and I take seriously the responsibility of shaping that experience for the people who do the same with ours.
Good UX leadership isn't about taste — it's about clarity of purpose, building conditions for great work, and holding the tension between player needs and competitive depth.
Strategy before solutions
Before any screen gets designed, I work to make sure the team understands why it matters — what player value it creates, how it connects to the broader experience, and what tradeoffs it asks us to make. Great execution on the wrong problem is still the wrong problem.
Player-informed, not just designer-driven
Intuition is a starting point, not a final answer. I build teams that stay close to how players actually experience the game — through research, playtests, telemetry, and community sentiment — and use that to pressure-test assumptions before they ship.
Name the tradeoffs
The best design decisions are ones where everyone understands what they're gaining and what they're giving up. I'd rather have honest friction in a design review than confident alignment around a decision nobody has examined closely enough.
Build the org, not just the work
My job is to make the team better — through critique culture, clear frameworks, cross-functional trust, and leadership development. The work I'm most proud of isn't a single feature; it's a team that raises its own bar.
2021 – Present
Riot Games
Director, UX Design — VALORANT
Over five years at Riot, progressing from Senior UX Manager to Director — owning the end-to-end UX strategy across VALORANT's multi-platform ecosystem. Built and scaled the UX discipline through a critical growth phase: establishing leadership depth, experience principles, quality standards, and cross-functional frameworks that let the team operate with clarity at scale across gameplay, progression, and social systems.
Strategy · Org leadership · Multi-platform2015 – 2021
Blizzard Entertainment
Design Lead, Senior II → UX/UI Designer
Progressed from UX/UI Designer on Overwatch League and Heroes of the Storm to senior design leadership across Battle.net and Online Products. Founded the Design Operations function, built a cross-platform design system, and directed a centralized Design Studio. Previously led UX for esports platform tools supporting global competitive ecosystems.
Design ops · Systems · EsportsPre-2015
Various
10+ years in design
Broad foundation across design leadership, branding, ecommerce, and web design — including guest lecturing at UCI and alumni mentorship through SCAD.
Branding · Web · EducationAs a director, my work doesn't show up in screenshots — it shows up in the quality, coherence, and resilience of a team and its output over time.
Grew and structured the UX team through a critical expansion phase — building management depth, establishing critique rituals, and creating frameworks that let designers work with more clarity and less escalation.
Focus: leadership pipeline, operational maturity, team health
Developed a cohesive UX strategy spanning VALORANT's full player ecosystem — connecting in-match clarity, meta-system engagement, and player identity into a single, operable framework for the design org.
Focus: pillars, values, design principles, cross-team alignment
Led UX for VALORANT's expansion to console — ensuring that a PC-native, high-precision experience translated to controller-first interaction without degrading the tactical depth that defines the game.
Focus: interaction model, platform parity, design systems
Repositioned UX from a downstream delivery function to an upstream strategic partner — influencing roadmap, shaping problem framing, and building the cross-discipline trust needed to make that stick.
Focus: product influence, design advocacy, decision frameworks