April 2004 to May 2007
Creative Director

The MathWorks is a privately-held, fast-growing (20% a year) software company with 1,800 employees and offices throughout the world. This was an opportunity to hone my leadership skills, learn about the software business, and use my experience to contribute to a young design team. In addition The MathWorks is a highly collaborative company that treats their employees well and contributes significantly to charities and the community. The ten person creative Services team develops all creative work for the company, print and online – 2,500 projects in 2006.

Responsibilities

• Lead the visual design for all MathWorks marketing materials: print and online
• Manage visual design team: Team evolution and individual career development
• Develop, evangelize, and evolve corporate identity standards
• Coach internal clients on creative development best practices
• Staff and resource planning
• Develop/monitor outsource budgets: designers, photographers, illustrators
• Develop and communicate creative services processes
• Develop and evolve visual design software/hardware standards and file management processes

Accomplishments

I was at The MathWorks for three years and was successful at evolving their corporate look and creative processes.

• This may sound odd, but my most significant accomplishment was integrating into an existing design team. In the past I was fortunate enough to hire my team. This management challenge taught me a new leadership dynamic.
• My primary creative accomplishment was improving the look of mathworks.com and creating a well-defined, articulated corporate design guide now used by everyone involved with visual design at The MathWorks.
• My primary management accomplishment was establishing solid creative business practices such as project definition, project management, planning, resource management, an outsourcing model, and basic client services. I researched and implemented a new project and business management tool. We chose QuickBase from Intuit. I designed a custom QuickBase application that is now used by Creative Services and MathWorks' worldwide Marketing for creative requests, project planning, project management, and project communications.

I decided to leave TMW for a director-level position at Constant Contact in Waltham Mass..