Build a Team that Doesn't Exist
Cloudflare's hypergrowth required building UX Intelligence from the ground up: No established discipline, no defined roles, no proven operating model.
I needed to hire, onboard, and scale a distributed team across time zones while delivering measurable business impact immediately.
This was not my first time establishing a new discipline.
At ADP, I learned that impact requires early entry into product vision. Content must shape direction, not decorate it.
At Calendly, I adopted a product-led growth mindset: UX must drive expansion and revenue.
At Cloudflare, I learned to prove ROI fast inside a company that does not slow down for process.
Across very different cultures, one pattern became clear:
The leadership challenge was not just hiring. It was designing a team model that fit the organization and delivered value immediately. Understanding what skillsets the company needed from my team.
Cultural Anthropology
1. Study the System Before Building It
| I Began by Identifying | Then I Defined Early UX Metrics Aligned to |
|---|---|
| Existing UX practices | Product development |
| Leadership priorities | Customer needs |
| Business targets | Revenue and retention |
| Cultural operating rhythms | Company KPI |
From day one, I set a standard: If we cannot measure impact, we do not work on it. That was what set us apart from other teams at Cloudflare. We owned the data. Every conversation came with a metric, positioning us as both the strategy team and the product research function.
2. Design the Org Around Systems, Not Tickets
Instead of structuring the team around one-to-one product requests, I designed the function around:
Business domains
Repeatable frameworks
Architectural influence
At Calendly, I worked within a deeply embedded squad model where UX sat directly inside product teams and influenced roadmap decisions at the feature level.
Cloudflare required a different model.
Given the portfolio scale and velocity, fully embedding UX across dozens of product areas was not feasible. Instead, I designed a domain-aligned service model:
Each team member developed deep expertise within a defined product surface
Coverage was prioritized by business impact
Repeatable frameworks replaced one-off dependencies
Architectural influence replaced feature-level embedding
This approach allowed us to scale strategic influence without creating bottlenecks.
I built a nine-person multidisciplinary team designed for systems-level work, not ticket execution. Backgrounds included Information Architecture, Development, Journalism, Marketing, Social Media Strategy, and Cybersecurity.
The diversity of perspective strengthened how we approached both language and technical complexity.
To operationalize the model, I implemented:
Scale leverage. Not headcount.
As we evolved from traditional UX Content Strategy to UX Intelligence, measurement became even more critical.
We did not implement AI for novelty. We implemented it for measurable advantage.
By grounding AI initiatives in clear metrics, the team shifted from being AI consumers to AI builders, moving roughly 80% of capacity toward strategic innovation rather than reactive execution.
3. Drive Executive Alignment
Beyond hiring, I focused on influence:
Internal leadership talks
Structured documentation
Cross-functional stakeholder partnerships
UX Intelligence became integrated into planning cycles and architecture discussions, not downstream execution.
High Impact Team
The results are durable and measurable.
Built a distributed team across EST, GMT, and CST
Achieved 95%+ retention (vs. ~75% industry benchmark)
Promoted every team member who reported to me for at least one year
Established three new UX disciplines across different companies
Stakeholder feedback consistently includes: "Your team is essential to our process."
One of my core strengths as a leader is building teams that perform at a high level and enjoy the work while doing it. Energy scales. So does impact.
The team became a durable system, not a dependent service function.