Caxy
See how I lead product, AI, and transformation.
Product Design Director
2013 – 2015
I led the agile transformation of one of Chicago's top-rated software firms.
Caxy was already one of Chicago's most highly rated software firms when it brought me onto its management team to raise the bar. I moved the company to an agile delivery model, taking the first Product Owner role myself to prove it on live work, and I set the creative standard across the firm's output. It was the first of three agile transformations I would lead.
- Led agile transformation as agile coach
Product
- Trained Product Owners in agile SDLC
Creative
- Led all creative services from brand strategy to marketing campaigns
Strategy
- Led product strategy for startups and enterprise
The Opportunity
Caxy was a strong, well-regarded software firm with real engineering depth and loyal clients. The opportunity was to match that with equal discipline in how the work shipped and equal polish in how the firm showed up.
The Challenge
Operations
The work was already good, so this was not a rescue. It was about raising a high bar higher, and doing it without slowing a firm that was busy delivering.
New process earns adoption when a team sees it work, not when it is handed down, so a mandate would not stick. And I had no slack to install it: I was leading the creative org and the firm’s biggest accounts at the same time. Every move had to count.
The Bet
Move the firm to agile by leading from the front. Take the first Product Owner role, prove Scrum on live, billable work, then roll it out to the team, all while setting the creative standard as the firm’s creative head.
What I led
The operating change at the center, and the creative range that backed it.
01
Agile Transformation
The delivery system I built, then handed to the team.
- Team Training
- Change Management
- SDLC Operationalized
02
Creative Head
As the firm’s creative head I set the standard for every creative output, from product design to branding.
- Design Standards
- Atomic Approach
- Brand Defined
03
Service Design
Established UX Practice
- Atomic Design & Lean UX
- Brand Strategy
- Product Strategy
What I left, and what I took with me
Agile did not stay mine. It became how Caxy delivered, and it ran without me.
I moved Caxy to agile, then did it again at Adage and inside the American Academy of Pediatrics’ product team. The same operating pattern, three times.
The Proof: Federal Signal
Federal Signal trades on the New York Stock Exchange and was built over decades by acquisition. Every brand it bought arrived with its own website, its own content, its own voice, scattered across the company’s web presence.
I led its move to a modern CMS, Drupal, and designed the custom theme it ran on. The harder half was the brand architecture: one site that could house its many acquired brands seamlessly, under a single coherent identity, while still carrying the investor and compliance materials a publicly traded company is required to publish.
Later I built Federal Signal Labs with the company’s head of innovation, the public face of his strategy to spotlight innovators across the company and pull more of them forward. It is the kind of complex, multi-brand program that rewards a firm with both deep engineering and disciplined delivery, exactly the combination we had built.
Caxy was the first agile transformation I led. It held without me, then I led two more.
Brand
Code Creative
The identity I built; my logo outlasted the firm’s next rebrand
Agile SDLC
1st
Product Owner. Installed Scrum as Caxy’s delivery method.
Big Projects
20M
Students reached, the SIFMA Stock Market Game