Happy Healthy Teams
Healthy design teams that grow their own leaders.
TL;DR
- The challenge
- How I lead
- Business outcome
2025 org outcomes: 121% growth in active Marketing Cloud automation orgs and 363% more activated workflows.1
designers in an international org, principal to entry level
Salesforce internal reporting (not public), 2025growth in activated workflows, 2025 org outcome
Salesforce internal reporting (not public), 2025of plan in Q1 2025, with 70% growth year on year
Salesforce internal reporting (not public), 2025The challenge
Automation and agent platforms take years to get right, and the designers who know them are hard to replace. A team stretched thin stops asking tough questions.
My role
Build teams that work well with product and engineering, and grow the leaders the org needs next.
How I lead
I treat team health as part of the work, and I lead from inside it.
Design leadership
I set one rule for every team on Flow and Agentforce: build an action once, and both people and agents use it. Earlier, product teams shipped Marketing Cloud features on my Automation Events framework without building the same thing twice.
Hands on
I still build. I architected the first MuleSoft-in-Slack prototypes and coded the proofs of concept for their integration agents, and as product architect I defined the headless interaction model the platform uses beyond its own screens.
Team building and mentoring
I built the design teams for MuleSoft Composer, RPA and IDP, and now lead 15+ designers, principal to entry level. At IBM, I mentored a design team within a design-led feedback culture, and several grew into senior roles.
Cross-functional partnership
I sponsor Ease of Use, a company-level program backed by EVP leadership to cut the time to a first workflow by 40%. At IBM, I introduced Design Thinking, which improved collaboration across product and engineering.1
Quality and consistency
I held Composer, Flow Integration and IDP to one design grammar. At IBM, the charts and data tools we designed for Watson Analytics were given back to Carbon, IBM’s design system.
User advocacy
I design for the admin’s ordinary week and bring research partners onto the team. At IBM, my team built and tested new Watson features for sales, marketing and supply chain.
Calm through change
I led design for MuleSoft RPA through the acquisition of Service Trace. At Salesforce I led Flow Builder design as two older automation tools retired, with migration designed as a product, not a doc.
Outcome
Designers moving into leadership, and a strong year for the business.
People
Designers in my org have been promoted into lead and architect roles: the start of the leadership pipeline I’m building.
Business, 2025
2025 org outcomes: 121% growth in active Marketing Cloud automation orgs and 363% more activated workflows. Q1 grew 70% year on year, at 133% of plan.1
Scope
The org designs the automation experience for a product suite with $38B+ in annual revenue, on a platform serving 52.8M monthly active users.1
Sources
- Salesforce internal reporting (not public)2025