Hello! I’m Ron.

I’m a product + design leader for the world’s most successful companies and up-and-coming disruptors.

I have 15+ years of experience as a designer and leader in Big Tech and Fortune #1—Meta, Google, Uber, Microsoft and Walmart—and startups ranging from early stage (<25 people) to pre-IPO.

Before that, I founded an award-winning product and design firm that worked with dozens of startups on their first MVP, finding product-market fit, and scaling up, including Uber as well as Uber Eats, when they were both just early experiments in limited cities.

Giving back to the community is important to me. I’ve taught design and spoken about product and technology at conferences (SXSW, IXDA), universities (SVA), and venture capital firms (Tiger Labs).

LinkedIn →

My values

I am a pragmatic visionary.

I organize cross-functional teams to think creatively about long term approaches, and have the technical chops to write product requirements and negotiate engineering tradeoffs. I consider the possibilities, applications and ethics of new technologies like GenAI.

I am a player-coach.

I can design as well as lead designers. I’ve always been hands-on and proactively roll up my sleeves to get things done and lead through example.

I am a storyteller.

I bring heart to raw data and user insight, focusing teams on “who” and “why”. I inspire teams by bringing user insight to life to both build empathy and ensure we’re solving real problems.

I have a systems mindset.

I design product frameworks for scale, future-proofing, and efficiency. I’ve led design systems from scratch, iterated through major rebrands, and worked on complex operating systems for new device categories.

“Ron brings a high degree of compassion and humanity to our design practice. He’s not afraid to be vulnerable and lead with his heart.”

— UPWARD FEEDBACK

Design Manager

REALITY LABS, NEW WEARABLES

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Led a patent-producing design team building a new device category for Meta—including a brand new operating system, design system—leveraging bleeding edge AR/VR technology.

Led a multi-disciplinary design team (product design, research, content) responsible for the operating system and design system for a new hardware product.
Shipped an OS comprised of over 80+ features supporting dozens of product teams including hundreds of engineers.
I worked across teams on hardware divisions on strategic investments across AR and VR in the midst of a company-wide rebrand from Facebook to Meta.
Stood up Craft and Collaboration processes and a shared vision of a platform for connection across products and devices.

Design Director

WALMART

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Led a team of designers, design managers and user research to design Walmart’s first Enterprise AI products to run all buyer activities, from product discovery, sourcing and pricing to in-store and online merchandising.

Led Walmart’s first Generative AI for Enterprise application for business strategy, consumer insights, trend forecasting and more.
Responsible for the Buyer experience, including product assortment, inventory, pricing, buyer/supplier touchpoints (all departments, $500B+ revenue).
Physical store retail strategy for 4,600+ stores and eCommerce platform for Walmart’s consumer website and mobile shopping app

Design Lead / Manager

GOOGLE LOCAL SEARCH

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Launched the biggest changes to Google's Local Search in over 5 years to create a more contextual, personalized and visual search (powered by AI/ML) to attract new audiences, particularly GenZ and international users.

Responsible for helping billions of daily users to seek out local destinations such as restaurants, shopping, services and attractions for Google's Local Search.
Set the foundation for a more visual search results and personalized categorical search experience across hundreds of local verticals, including Dining, Shopping, Services, Leisure, Commodities.

Design Lead

UBER EATS | COURIER

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When Uber Eats was just an experiment, I was responsible for outlining a vision for how to scale the courier network by 10x while unifying Uber’s Rides and Delivery businesses into a single app for the first time.

Redesigned the Uber Eats delivery experience as it scaled from an experiment in 22 cities, to a $3B revenue business in 120+ cities.
Launched Uber Eats’ first internal research program, in which employees do deliveries to identify gaps and opportunities
Pitched/launched a global philanthropic food donation program delivering thousands of pounds of food to those in need

Founder & Director

STUDIO AKKO

I founded a full service digital agency with a full time team, that partnered with over two dozen startups and Fortune 500’s on early stage product ideation and MVP launch.

We launched several award winning design concepts and highly rated apps in the iOS App Store.
Through Akko, I launched Artifacts, a New York based conference bi-annual conference attended by 1,000+ designers and makers.
Notable clients included American Express, Motorola, Bloomberg, Dolby, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Clinique, and Uber.