Most design leaders get to onboard into a stable org and build from there. I joined ServiceNow through the acquisition of data.world, which meant onboarding into a 20,000-person enterprise while simultaneously leading my team through replatforming, M&A integration, and a company-wide shift to AI-native, all at once. That's the context for everything below.

The team I joined was less than a year old, operating inside a newly formed Workflow Data Fabric department with product managers and engineering teams still learning the data catalog space. The pace was fast and the expectations were high. Within the first 90 days, I established AI and design principles, restructured how the team operated, and started moving us from output-driven delivery toward work that connects to adoption and user value.