Hi, I’m Melissa, an experienced product design leader who thrives at the intersection of craft, strategy, and team leadership. Throughout my career, I’ve built and led design teams for consumer products at scale, shaping core conversation experiences at Twitter and launching a new editorial platform at Viacom. Today at Thumbtack, I lead a team focused on high-impact new bets, helping the company explore new opportunities while building a strong, collaborative design culture.
At Thumbtack, I've honed my skills in developing 0–1, next generation products. Recently, I have been leading design for our AI-enabled hiring experience. Prior to that I led design for a new home maintenance product. As part of the design leadership team, I've led efforts to establish an operating model for a virtual first design org, updated career criteria and established strategies to up-level craft and quality.
Work samples provided upon request.
I led a product design team focused on Twitter's core experiences of starting and participating in conversations. We created a variety of engagement-driving solutions to help customers express themselves and foster healthy discourse in Tweets and DMs.
During my time at Viacom, I led product design for a startup within the company that reimagined MTV News for a millennial audience. We then went on to scale the editorial platform to the other Viacom brands. I also built the design team to support these efforts. I then went on to lead design for Viacom's event platform (supporting shows like the MTV VMAs) where we created a new and engaging voting experience.
I love to make things — whether it's taking photos, cooking or even doing my own nail art — I thrive when I get to be creative. I am a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design where I fell in love with computers and design. Brooklyn is my home, along with my husband and our dog Stella. Walking around New York City is endlessly inspiring to me.
I built this site with Claude Code and used Claude Design and Figma for exploration and details.