Strategic design leader with 15 years of experience designing and leading teams during digital transformation and hyper growth
About
With 15 years of experience in multidisciplinary design, research, and management, I have a proven track record of leading high-performing design teams across various specializations. My expertise lies in understanding and optimizing the systems that enhance customer experience delivery, and implementing operational tools and processes that empower teams to perform at their best. Currently, as a Senior Design Manager at Atlassian, I lead several distributed design teams across integrations (3P), ecosystem (2P), user onboarding, and crossflow (1P) for Confluence.
As a practitioner, I specialize in leading research, visualizing complexity, and strategizing cohesive end-to-end experiences. My broad design experience has given me valuable literacy across many key aspects of leading design, including design operations, service design, user research, content design, design systems, native mobile, responsive web, accessibility, generative AI, technical writing, and front-end development.
As a people manager, I am deeply committed to my team’s well-being, performance, and career growth, consistently earning positive feedback. I thrive as a collaborative design partner, working closely with product and engineering teams to align on strategy, accelerate delivery, and champion experience quality.
Over the course of my career, I've established new in-house design capabilities, hired and managed high-performing teams of individual contributors, created developmental programs for new grads, delivered talks and workshops for large groups at conferences and internal events, demonstrated the value of good data hygiene from sales to support, and devised new methods and frameworks to help organizations measure and scale experience quality.
My experience working for several hyper-growth tech companies has encouraged adaptability in my approach to design leadership, as the current climate necessitates more proactive cross-functional collaboration, rapid experimentation, and improved speed to delivery without compromising experience quality.
Resume
Experience
Sr. Design Manager
Atlassian | Remote
May 2021 to Present
Design Manager
Shopify | Remote
May 2018 to Dec 2020
Design Manager
Fannie Mae | Washington, DC
Nov 2016 to Mar 2018
Design Manager / Lead Designer
Capital One | McLean, VA
Nov 2014 to Nov 2016
Product Designer
Uberflip | Toronto
Dec 2013 to May 2014
Communications Manager
FACTOR | Toronto
Aug 2012 to Aug 2013
Head of Music Licensing
Core Music Agency | Vancouver
Mar 2009 to Apr 2012
Education
D.Des Transition Design
Carnegie Mellon University
2017 - 72 credits
B.A. Communication Studies
York University | Toronto
2014 - Summa Cum Laude
B.A. English
University of Guelph | Guelph
2005
Skills
Leadership
Hiring and Growing Teams
People Management
CX and Product Strategy
Design Operations
OKR Planning
Scoping and Resourcing
Practice Development
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Connecting Related Work
Executive Reviews
Technical
Visualizing Complexity
Ethnography
UI Design
User Testing
Impact Assessment
Org Design
Copywriting and Editing
Information Architecture
Strengths & Values
Strengths
Kind, caring, dedicated team member
Versatile practitioner
Biased toward action and positive human impact
Adaptable to change and grounded when coaching others through it
Big systems thinker, idea person, and strategist
Observant, organized, and pragmatic
In the flow when visualizing complexity and bringing order to chaos
Committed to building kind and inclusive cultures
Values
Kindness
Fairness
Community
Feedback
“Her style of compassionate and comprehensive leadership should be a lesson for other managers. She quickly got up to speed on my specific projects and asked the right questions to quickly understand my professional goals and ways of working. I haven’t seen a person get onboarded to a team that fast before.”
“Jacquelyn actively invests time and effort to empower each team member. She goes the extra mile, clearing obstacles and offering critique or support to ensure the team’s focus remains on what truly matters. What sets her apart is not just encouragement, but a hands-on approach—providing valuable insights and drawing from her own wealth of experience to elevate both the work produced and the way the team operates.”
“Jacquelyn is an incredible systems-minded leader who is able to see and make connections across broad streams of work. She is someone I would work for again in a heartbeat.”
“Jacquelyn has been a great partner for our pillar. She’s brought learnings from her onboarding team rituals and organization to improve our velocity. She’s transparent and kind in her approach, and she seeks to include both Peter and me in decisions that will affect our teams.”
“I have learned so much about service design, organization design, team building, and leadership from you. I have also learned, and continue to learn, so much from the incredibly bright team you have built and its collectively diverse experience and intelligence. I feel lucky to be able to go to work every day with such smart, warm-hearted colleagues—thank you for everything you did to bring us together. Your mentorship has meant a lot to me and I hope it can continue.”
“Jacquelyn is awesome! She is a manager that people want to work with again. She’s intelligent, empathetic, talented, and insightful. Atlassian and Confluence are better for having her!”
“She always pushed us to understand the customer, be their voice, and not idly pursue projects that were in direct conflict with user needs. I really admire the hard stance that Jacquelyn takes on this. I was also very excited when Jacquelyn would wear her service design hat and help the team to visualize the systems and services that surrounded the work that we did.”