TL;DR
- Role: Sr. Director of Product & Design
- Timeframe: Mar 2023 to Jun 2025
- Business problem: Axios HQ had outgrown its original product shape. New features were fighting the old information architecture before they could create value.
- What I changed: Rebuilt the product foundation in 90 days, matured product, design, research, and analytics into one organization, and defined an AI strategy built around visible and invisible assistance.
- Proof: Rebuilt the foundation in 90 days and doubled AI usage across the platform.
The problem was not navigation
Navigation was the symptom. Axios HQ started as a focused writing tool and became a platform in waiting. Every new feature fought the old structure before it could create value. The constraint was the mental model itself.
The product no longer had a shape anyone could hold in their head, and the company was about to ask it to carry a much bigger roadmap. Rebuilt the information architecture first because planning, research, collaboration, measurement, and AI all depended on it.
v1 · 2022
v2 · 2024
What I did
- Re-architected the product experience in the first 90 days so the AI work and feature roadmap that followed had a coherent structure to live inside, not bolted onto an app that no longer made sense.
- Led product, design, research, and analytics as one organization: built and matured each function in place rather than running them as separate workstreams.
- Built research infrastructure (personas, JTBD frameworks, feedback loops) as durable assets the team could draw on continuously, not one-off studies archived after a readout.
- Introduced Shape-Up-inspired planning and North Star vision framing so the team could commit to bets without losing executive visibility.
- Partnered with CEO, CMO, CTO, COO, and Head of AI on product direction and AI strategy. Shaped the "visible versus invisible AI" frame: AI that earns user trust surfaces itself; AI that earns user time stays out of the way.
One decision system
Shared planning cadence
One product decision
Shared planning cadence
Product
Frames the decision
sets scope + success criteria
Design
Shapes the experience
translates intent into form
Research
Grounds the decision
feeds qual signal upstream
Analytics
Validates the decision
measures what shipped
AI
Woven through,
accelerates every function
Engineering
Builds the decision
ships and learns in cycle
The Strategic Frame
Visible vs. invisible AI
A two-axis decision rule for every AI surface and internal flow at Axios HQ. Show the work where the user owns the decision. Disappear where the user wants the friction gone.
Visible AI
Earns trust by surfacing the intelligence.
Where AI participates in a decision the user owns, the system shows its work and gives the user the controls to accept, edit, or reject.
01 Smart Brevity panel
Subject-line suggestions with Dismiss and Regenerate.
02 ROI dashboard actions
AI-suggested next steps such as "Send the Audience Survey."
03 Insights and recommendations
Surfaced under a sparkle icon so the user sees the assist.
Invisible AI
Earns time by removing the friction.
Where AI removes a step the user never wanted to take, the system performs the work in the background and leaves the override visible but quiet.
01 Editorial planning automation
Cadence work the editor never has to assemble by hand.
02 Suggested chips on metadata
Pre-filled tags in the editor metadata column.
03 Internal Zapier and custom GPTs
Background flows that absorb the team's operational overhead.
Visible AI · Smart Brevity
3 points
The panel offers three subject-line variants based on Smart Brevity. The model proposes options to compare, it does not silently rewrite the email.
What changed
- Axios HQ gained a product structure it could build on: one IA map, no more per-feature structural negotiation.
- Research moved from reactive to infrastructure: personas and JTBD work grounded the team in evidence before decisions were committed.
- Planning became something the team owned. Shape-Up shaped cycles; North Star framing kept executives informed without forcing the team to defend work every week.
- AI became a product principle, not a press release. The visible/invisible frame guided individual product decisions without requiring executive arbitration on each one.
- Platform-wide AI usage doubled. That outcome was the structural bet paying off.
Selected v3 surfaces
What the rebuild made possible.
- 01 / 03Vision Planner
Editorial planning by week and channel. The kanban surfaces commitment, not just intent. - 02 / 03Calendar
The calendar reads as a budget, not an inbox. Send timing and target dates live in one place, so editors plan capacity instead of chasing deadlines. - 03 / 03Collaboration
Feedback happens where the work lives. Inline threads sit on the highlight itself, and mentions route the question straight to the right teammate.
AI usage across the platform
Doubled inside one tenure.
Verified outcome.
Reflection
I would pull research earlier. Starting from user mental models would have sharpened the first architecture pass and cut some downstream iteration on decisions we had already made on gut.