Project Overview
SoFi was at a critical inflection point—evolving from a student loan refinance company to a full-stack financial services provider.
With less than a handful of designers and no cohesive design language, the company needed to scale rapidly while delivering a unified experience across new and existing products. I joined to lead the company’s transformation with audacious goals: build a strategic and scalable design function, power the experience through user research, and build and deliver at speed through design systems to launch SoFi’s first mobile app.
My Role
Built and scaled SoFi's first product design and user research organization, from the ground up. Established vision for mobile app, team hiring strategy, and operating models to deliver high-quality design at scale.
Championed design systems and user research as strategic accelerants, enabling faster, more consistent execution while aligning fragmented product roadmaps around real customer needs and business outcomes.
Led at both the executive and boardroom levels—presenting vision and progress to leadership. All the while modeling cross-functional collaboration across the company to operationalize strategy through empowered teams.
Challenge
Working at speed with constraints.
When I joined, design was not seen as a strategic partner, but rather a purely execution function. The team of three designers worked in isolation, without a shared process or unified system. Meanwhile, SoFi was in the midst of acquiring a company and preparing to launch new products. Additionally, there was no SoFi mobile app, which significantly limited user engagement and growth.
SoFi's experience had been built for desktop
12 month Approach
Phase 1
Diagnose and Build the Team
Phase 2
Scale, Accelerate Through Design System
Phase 3
Launch SoFi’s First Mobile App
Phase 1
Rapidly build out a diverse, talented team.
I quickly hired a team of top talent and focused them on specific product verticals such as Lending, Investing, and Borrowing. Culture was pivotal. I instilled practices to strengthen cross-functional and team collaboration. Throwing work on walls, workshops, open door policies and fun Friday afternoons to decompress and hang in the lounge.
Key to success: stakeholder workshops, user research and top design talent
Phase 2
Build design systems to accelerate delivery.
We leveraged our collective talent, stakeholder, and customer input to land on a new and fresh approach for the brand. The new design system was effective because it was modern and simple, offering a fresh alternative to the traditional, stiff banking options. The identity brought consistency to our product offerings and a foundation that could support evolution.
mobile app, web and card designs
Phase 3
Introduce the SoFi mobile app to the world.
Launch was led in close coordination with partners across the company.
mobile app, web and card designs
Impact
A fresh design system and mobile app delivered in less than a year.
My squad successfully delivered the 0→1 experience on iOS, Android, and Web—scaling SoFi for wider audiences and future products. No easy feat, but I’m proudest of building a team that established the talent bar, played nicely together, and worked efficiently under tight constraints. Our impact on lending, the company's revenue driver, might be what I am most proud of.
40%
increase in loan starts
50%
Increased loan start-to-fund conversion by
60%
DECREASE IN LOAN PROCESSING
AND TIME TO FUND