I am a product designer and leader with over a decade of experience conceiving, designing, planning and building digital products and experiences. 

I have an eclectic background in psychology, graphic design, and computer science, the combination of which have helped me create products that speak to the hearts of real people while staying grounded in reality. 

Before my current role as Product Design Lead on Uber's Uber Everything Team, I was the Head of Product/Design for two Series B companies in the on-demand space. Prior to that, I was the founder of Studio Akko, a boutique user experience, design and strategy consultancy in New York City. My team and I worked with a over 30 startups ranging from Seed to Series B stage (including Uber, back in 2011). I also helped build a UX and service design practice at an industrial design studio called LUNAR (acquired by McKinsey), and led early mobile and cross-platform research and design at San Francisco-based product studio PUNCHCUT and Microsoft.

As a labor of love, and to get talented people to step out of their disciplinary silos, I founded Artifacts, a cross-disciplinary event which has drawn over 1000+ attendees and has included a diverse mix of speakers, interactive demos and live performances from companies such as Google, Warby Parker, The New York Times, and more. 

I love to engage with the design community and have spoken at IDEO, Facebook, Buzzfeed, AIGA, IxDA, and SXSW. I’ve also mentored designers and multidisciplinary teams at universities such as Princeton and SVA on lean user experience and research practices. I'm on the Board of Advisors for a number of startup ventures as well. 

I'm also a recent student of mixology (making fancy cocktails), and have designed an app for aspiring mixologists called The Liquor Cabinet that launched in July 2016.

FUN FACTS ABOUT ME

• I love karaoke, and will sing it with or without a karaoke machine. As a self-taught guitarist, I can play most songs by ear (especially if they're from the 80's or 90's) and occasionally host acoustic karaoke sessions. I'm proficient in English, Spanish, Hebrew, but I've also sung in Romanian, French, and Portuguese.

• I have a serious addiction to popcorn. I bought an old school countertop air popper, invent my own recipes and test them on my friends.

• I occasionally exhibit artwork. My biggest piece was 5 stories tall on the side of an old military barrack in Marin, Northern California. My second biggest was a live painting of a bird on an 8 foot wide piece of sanded plexiglass.

• I  play the flamenco guitar and my teacher's teacher has a clock tower in Sevilla named after him.

• I'm a trained Argentine tango dancer, have danced tango in 5 continents, and taught a couple how to tango for their wedding once.

• As a grad student, I wrote a piece of music and created visuals for a Turkish choreographer. It was selected to be featured by Mikhail Baryshnikov when he was forming a new dance center in Manhattan.

• I was the tallest guy on my high school basketball team and have superhero reflexes from spending years as a hockey goaltender having rubber pucks shot at my face.

SAY HI

If you ever want to chat, I love to meet new people that have similar and wildly different passions - don't hesitate to reach out.

Contact

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