Leadership · VP / Head of Product Design
20+ years in Product Design and 6+ years leading design organizations across enterprise SaaS, AdTech, healthcare and cloud. I hire and grow leaders, set UX strategy and operating models, partner with the C-suite, and use AI where it creates real leverage—with people accountable for judgment.
Most recent: VP Product Design, Operative
Enterprise SaaS · AdTech · Healthcare · Cloud
Open to VP / Head roles · Remote (US) or relocation
Best Overall Innovation Idea - Kaiser Permanente (2019)
Alice Raia - Vice President, KP Digital Experience Engineering (left)
Lloyd McFarlin - Senior Mobile Engineer (middle)
Christian Young - Lead UI/UX Mobile Designer (right)
ARR portfolio led across five enterprise product lines
Operative
Person experience organization co-led, serving 12M+ members
Kaiser Permanente
Person design & UX organization, including 3 UX managers
DigitalOcean
Best of Show recognitions for Operative products (IBC 2024, NAB 2025, IBC 2025)
Product & team recognition
What I bring to your leadership team
Six leadership strengths, each backed by results I’m glad to walk through in an interview.
01 · Teams
Hire, mentor and grow award-winning teams
I build benches of managers, principals and senior ICs, set a clear bar for great work, and give people the context and room to grow. Work from teams I’ve led and co-led has been recognized at IBC, NAB, the CSI Awards and the Webbys.
Managed 3 UX managers at DigitalOcean · co-led 60+ at Kaiser · coached 8 designers at ABB
02 · Education
Teach, so standards scale
I turn expertise into shared capability—training, playbooks, design reviews and self-service standards that designers, PMs and engineers actually use.
400+ Kaiser Permanente employees trained in WCAG and inclusive design; accessibility speaker at CSUN and MSSA
03 · Strategy & process
UX strategy and operating models that stick
I connect experience strategy to portfolio priorities, then build the operating model—governance, design systems, decision rhythms and KPIs—that makes quality repeatable.
Evolved Operative’s design function into an AI-first Center of Excellence; built a KPI-driven UX model at DigitalOcean
04 · Product + Engineering
A true partner to Product and Engineering
Shared design systems, prototyping standards and clean handoff turn Design into an accelerator for the product trio, not a bottleneck.
Operative modernization contributed to 23% lower development costs, 18% higher release velocity and 20–30% faster cycles
05 · Executive partnership
Trusted in the C-suite
I partner with C-suite, Product, Engineering, Data and commercial leaders on portfolio priorities, bringing NPS, CSAT, analytics and research into executive planning.
Directed Product Design for a $150M ARR portfolio, shaping portfolio and operating-model decisions with executive leadership
06 · Accessibility
Accessibility as an executive priority
I build accessibility into design systems, procurement and every role—not late-stage QA. WCAG 2.1/2.2, Section 508, VPAT/ACR and JAWS testing since my Sun and Oracle days.
Led Operative’s first VPAT and first public Accessibility Conformance Report, strengthening enterprise RFP readiness
AI with a human in the loop
After a 20% workforce reduction at Operative, I set direction for an AI-first Design Center of Excellence—so a smaller team could keep delivery moving across five product lines without lowering the bar.
01 · Ground it
Before anything is generated: approved components, tokens, content rules and accessibility expectations from the design system.
02 · Automate the repeatable
AI-supported research synthesis, prototyping, documentation, and UI-consistency, accessibility and microcopy checks.
03 · People decide
Humans own strategy, new interaction patterns, trust-sensitive work, accessibility edge cases and low-confidence outputs.
Defined Operative’s Agentic AI UX vision · AI leadership education from Duke, Vanderbilt and Google Cloud
In their words
“Christian was instrumental in changing the design direction for an organization with true need for a leader… I highly recommend Christian for any organization looking for strong design acumen, leadership skills, and a strategic mindset.”
Steve Paoletti
CPO, Operative
“Christian spearheaded the adoption of AI across solutions with a UX guide and template that significantly reduced the cycle time of design and development.”
Naren Rajappa
SVP / CTO, Operative
“Not only is he an expert digital leader, he has a huge heart and deeply cares about the growth and recognition of his team and those he works with.”
Kylie Emers
Head of User Experience, Kaiser Permanente
How I lead
01 — People first
Clarity, trust, accountability and room to grow, so teams can do their best work at scale.
02 — Systems over heroics
Operating models, design systems and standards that make quality repeatable—not dependent on rescues.
03 — Evidence over opinion
Research, analytics, NPS, CSAT and experimentation drive better tradeoffs and clearer priorities.
04 — AI with purpose
AI where it creates leverage; human judgment stays accountable for strategy, trust and edge cases.
Hiring a VP or Head of Product Design?