Product Design Leadership

I bring clarity to complex,
cross-team design —
and keep it human.

Senior Manager of Product Design at ServiceNow, leading the ITSM design organization — 20+ designers across Incident, Problem, and Change. 20+ years turning ambiguity into shipped experiences and building teams that feel safe enough to do their best work.

Sr. Manager, Product Design · ServiceNowITSM & AI-native experiencesCalifornia

See the work LinkedIn

The throughline

The same person, described for twenty years.

Across Nokia, Illumina, TakeLessons, Renovate America, and ServiceNow — through individual craft and through management — the feedback keeps landing on the same handful of things. That consistency is the point.

Clarity under complexity

Synthesizes messy, multi-team problems into a direction people can actually move on.

People first

Builds psychological safety where honest conversation and good work both happen.

Calm in the chaos

Steady when timelines slip and the room gets loud — a stabilizing presence.

Craft & customers

Relentless about ease of use and the details, with the customer kept at the center.

Humor that disarms

Levity that takes tension out of hard conversations and brings people back to earth.

How I lead

Conviction at altitude. Warmth up close.

A leadership style built on informed point of view, operational rigor, and genuine care — refined over nearly twenty years of doing the work.

Altitude & details

Lead at altitude, deliver in the details

Systems-level thinking and executive-legible communication — paired with a willingness to jump back into the file when the team is in crunch. Strategy and craft aren't separate jobs.

"The conductor of an orchestra — bringing clarity, harmony, and momentum to an incredibly complex effort, with limited resources."

Safety

Psychological safety isn't soft

People do their best work when they can ask the dumb question, disagree, and be vulnerable. That environment is something you build on purpose — and defend.

"His openness and honesty create a safe environment. I always feel like he has my (our) back(s)."

Conviction

Conviction over consensus

Forms a real point of view from research and customer truth, then advocates for it — while staying genuinely open to being moved by a better argument.

"Adam has evolved from playing it safe to confidently pushing the boundaries in design — a clear positive impact on our solutions."

Levity

Humor is a leadership tool

Used well, humor disarms tension and builds trust faster than any process. Calibrated to the moment — not suppressed, not performed.

"He brings a degree of levity to tough convos… This quality is frankly rare — but essential — in our line of work."

Selected work

Where clarity and craft met the stakes.

A few efforts that captured the pattern: high ambiguity, high visibility, many moving parts — turned into something shipped and celebrated.

Flagship demos

ServiceNow · ITSM

Knowledge (annual user conference) 23–25, Sales Kickoff, Financial Analyst Day

Keynote & event demos for AI-native ITSM

Led and program-managed design for the company's most visible keynote demos — guiding multiple designers across time zones through chaotic, last-minute pivots. Two Knowledge 25 vignettes showcasing agentic AI were chosen for the main stage at the Chief Product Officer's keynote and again at Financial Analyst Day; the team also salvaged a broken outside-agency demo into a polished customer success story. The work shaped sales pipeline, drew recognition from the SVP and General Manager of Technology Workflows, was something Workday asked to share with their leaders to build AI business cases — and was referenced in Forbes.

Agentic AIDesign program mgmtCross-time-zoneExec visibility

Cross-BU leadership

ServiceNow

Impact · ITSM · Core Business Suite

Now Assist for Setup & Core IT

Co-led a first-of-its-kind cross-business-unit design partnership, creating a shared roadmap and joint review structure so that over 10 designers working in parallel across three organizations could ship consistently. Simultaneously led the Core IT Fulfiller, Requestor, and Admin experiences, introducing design task-management practices that improved alignment — and strategically reallocating designers to move the fulfiller track from yellow to green risk.

Multi-team orchestrationDesign opsRisk recovery

Systems & scale

ServiceNow

Horizon Design System

Service Operations Workspace Figma library

Helped shape and scale a living source of truth built on the Horizon Design System — covering the most common pages, configurations, and components of Service Operations Workspace, the core application for IT Service Management at ServiceNow — so designers across ITSM, and customers themselves, could build faster, more consistent end-to-end experiences.

Design systemsReusable patternsEnablement

Earlier impact

Renovate America · Illumina

TakeLessons · Intuit

A decade of shipping the hard ones

As principal designer at Renovate America, drove mobile experiences that beat first-year business goals and helped a "version 1" product be hailed as best-in-class — credited by a CEO partner with contributing to 4× year-over-year growth. At Illumina, made sophisticated gene-sequencing instrument workflows genuinely usable. At TakeLessons, led the first iPhone app, instituted rigorous usability testing, and created the company's first style guide. At Intuit, reimagined complex TurboTax flows with little direction.

MobileHuman factors0→1 processUsability

The path

From human factors to design leadership.

Now

Senior Manager, Product Design — ServiceNow

Leading the ITSM design organization — 20+ designers and 14 direct reports across Incident, Problem, and Change Management, supporting a business unit that accounts for $4B+ in company revenue.

Earlier at ServiceNow

Sr. UX Designer → Staff Designer → Manager, Product Design

Re-architected the core platform experience, then led Manager Workspaces as Core App Lead, then moved into people management — building a global team of 8 across the ITSM pillars and promoting four designers with almost zero attrition.

Before

Principal / Lead Product Designer — Renovate America

Owned flagship contractor mobile app experience; partnered across the org to balance business goals with user needs.

Before

UX / Design Lead — TakeLessons & Intuit

Built design process from the ground up, shipped first mobile apps, and reimagined complex consumer flows.

Foundations

Human Factors & UI Design — Illumina & Nokia

Cut teeth making highly technical instruments and mobile interfaces intuitive — and learned to bridge the gap between engineers and designers early.

In their words

What collaborators say.

A selection from across companies, roles, and years — managers, reports, engineers, and peers.

"One of the most steady, thoughtful design leaders I've partnered with. During the wildest months of the AI transformation, he brought calm, humor, and a grounded perspective that helped teams navigate constant change."

Tami McBride
AI Experience Strategy · ServiceNow

"He doesn't just focus on the work; he focuses on the people doing it. Working with Adam made a real difference in my career."

Akshay Hargude
Staff Product Designer · ServiceNow

"A high-impact leader with a calm, grounded presence — the institutional knowledge base of any organization. He always seems to have the answer, context, or insight one needs."

Pranjal Ranka
Design Leadership · ServiceNow

"Even with a 10-hour time difference, Adam was always accessible, responded quickly, and would meet very early in his morning — real commitment and flexibility."

Ephraim Grinsztajn
Sr. Product Designer · ServiceNow

"Adam not only welcomes feedback, he craves it. I've never met someone who takes feedback so enthusiastically — he listens, understands, and acts, leaving any ego at the door."

Rachael Parekh
Product Designer

"Adam's designs delight users, drive actions, and deliver business results. His work is a great example of 'design is how it works.'"

Daniel Sutoyo
Director, Product · ServiceNow

"His unrelenting focus and internal championing for simplicity delivered an experience hailed as best-in-class even in its version-one release — and contributed to 4× year-over-year growth."

Patrick Moore
CEO · Mosaic

"Working alongside Adam as a developer, there was always a chance to expand my own skill set — the experiences he crafted were top-notch, and my code had to match."

Travis Thompson
Engineering Manager · ServiceNow

Recognition

A track record that compounds.

Recognition tends to follow the same theme — showing up for the team and getting hard things over the line.

peer Kudos received at ServiceNow (2023–2025)

tagged "Win as a Team" — the most-cited value, by far

50+

LinkedIn recommendations across 20+ years and 6 companies

20yrs

of feedback converging on the same strengths

Keynote demo work referenced in ForbesK25 vignettes selected for Chief Product Officer's keynote & Financial Analyst DayBuilt the San Diego UX community via UX Speakeasy — former President, Board member, and CFOSDXD — former organizer and speakerContributor to SD Design Trek · World Design Capital yearPhi Beta Kappa · Golden Key International Honour Society

Connect

Let's build teams and experiences that last.

Open to conversations about design leadership, building high-trust teams, and shipping ambitious AI-native experiences.

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