Daniel Giordan

Chicago, IL (Remote) dgiordan@mac.com 331.442.7174 www.danielgiordan.com

Design Leader — Enterprise Scale · Org Transformation

Design leader with 20+ years building, scaling, and transforming design organizations across enterprise, retail, media, and growth-stage platforms. Establishes design standards that elevate brand position and strengthen the connection between brand and audience. Leads design orgs through divestiture, rebrand, and portfolio consolidation with direct C-suite and cross-functional partnership across product, engineering, and research. Applies AI-augmented design workflows — as leader, and hands-on when the work calls for it — to widen exploration, raise the quality bar, and compress strategy-to-prototype cycles.

Author of 15 books on digital design and imaging, with an MFA from Bard and a fellowship from Yale. That foundation shapes how I lead — standards-led, strategically grounded, and accountable to outcomes.

Professional Experience

Director, Design Lead 2023 – 2026
Arity (Allstate) — Chicago, IL (Remote)

Crafted the product and go-to-market strategy for Arity's expansion beyond insurance, leading the design team across both the product org (SDK, mobile publishing) and the sales org (prototypes, demo experiences) for the world's largest driving behavior dataset (1T+ miles, 100B+ trips, tens of millions of active drivers).

  • Enterprise partnerships — Led experience strategy with Experian (30–80M app users), Alarm.com/ADT (10M MAU, 1,600+ white-label partners), and SiriusXM (pathway to 110M+ users via Pandora); designed product concepts and demo experiences that helped secure new relationships.
  • Market introduction — Created Experian's Test Drive Experience, the consumer-facing concept that introduced Arity's driving intelligence to Experian's subscriber base and 30+ insurance carrier network
  • Visualization layer — Built the data visualization layer that translated complex behavioral telemetry into tools commercial clients could use for insurance, retail site selection, and trade area analysis
  • AI prototyping — Built and ran an AI-augmented prototyping pipeline (Cursor, Figma Make, Copilot, frontier LLMs) that multiplied the directions the team explored per sprint and shipped functional demos in days — working software for sales and product, including Arity Geosight (ZIP-level insurance pricing) and Arity RTA (dynamic retail/QSR trade areas).
  • Team direction — Helped set the direction and foundations for AI-augmented exploration and iteration as team practice, with brand and business criteria as the guardrails.
Vice President, Product Design & Development 2021 – 2022
Champion Gaming — Remote

Defined product and growth strategy for a subscription sports intelligence platform — rebuilt architecture, subscription model, and UX to reach new audiences without alienating the core.

  • Rebuilt core product and subscription funnel: +280% subscribers, +20% YOY revenue, 2–3x engagement post-launch.
Vice President, User Experience 2019 – 2021
NielsenIQ (Nielsen)

Led a 20-person global design org (Design, UX, Research) through Nielsen's $6B divestiture. Stabilized, modernized, and rebranded a product portfolio supporting over 40% of all retail sales and distribution traffic worldwide.

  • Portfolio unification — Rebranded and unified 100+ enterprise apps for CPG, retail, and media clients worldwide.
  • Strategic innovation — Led an innovative integrated solution that unified Nielsen’s disparate client reporting as one platform—a reframe that required the organization to see the portfolio differently; secured commitment from mid-level stakeholders through senior leadership, and drove acceptance, implementation, and deployment.
  • C-suite partnership — Partnered with the C-suite to rationalize the portfolio: consolidate, sunset, or invest by product line.
Senior Director, UX & Product 2017 – 2019
Foot Locker

Led a 12-person UX org (Design, UX, Research) across Foot Locker's global eCommerce platforms, spanning 8 retail brands.

  • Increased conversion +7% through checkout and transaction flow redesign
  • Unified multi-brand design architecture across all 8 global brands
Digital Practice Partner — UX Strategy & Interaction Design 2014 – 2016
Wipro Digital

Started Wipro Digital's UX practice as employee #1 for design. Built it into a global operation serving Fortune 500 clients across financial services, healthcare, and retail.

  • Practice scale — Grew the organization from 0 to ~370 designers and contractors
  • Delivery model — Established practice standards, delivery frameworks, and repeatable design processes
  • Strategic reframing — Reframed a stalled $40M initiative; reset scope and value narrative and landed a $3M+ engagement.
Senior Vice President / Partner, Customer Experience 2012 – 2013
Rosetta (Publicis Groupe)

Led UX nationally across all 9 offices of a $300M agency (ranked #9 on Ad Age's Agency A list). Managed 76 designers. 92% utilization, 83% billability.

  • New business — Participated in 43 new business pitches in first year — ~25% close rate
  • Practice integration — After Publicis acquired Rosetta, unified Level Studios, Brulant, and Wishbone and standardized delivery so nine offices ran as one customer experience practice.
  • Commerce+ launch — Launched Commerce+ with Publicis, Rosetta, and IBM; served as Adobe Marketing Cloud SME for key accounts.
Director, Customer Experience — Recommendations & Personalization 2008 – 2012
Sears Holdings

Led UX and visual design for a strategic R&D group reporting to Chairman Eddie Lampert, and built the experience layer for a personalization engine correlating data across 22 recommendation models.

  • Directed Sears Catalogue app v2–3: +20% online revenue; tied to $41B in-store sales in FY2011.
  • Replaced incumbent vendor Rich Relevance for email personalization — 600% increase in opens (0.7% → 4.3%)
Early career 2006 – 2008

Razorfish (Microsoft), 2007–2008

Coldwater Creek, 2006–2007

Director, Design 2001 – 2006
AOL (Time Warner) — Columbus, OH

Defined the content and traffic strategy for AOL Web Properties — Netscape, CompuServe, AIM, and AOL content channels — across Time Warner's digital portfolio.

  • Netscape Network MAU growth — CNN +4M, People +2M, SI +1.2M, EW +1M.
  • Grew team from 7 to 36 (UX, visual, art direction, photo, research) with $4M+ budget.

Publications, Awards & Speaking

Author of 15 books on digital design and imaging, including the Art of Photoshop series (multiple editions; Barnes & Noble exclusive) and Art of Photoshop for Photographers. Contributor to Adobe Magazine and Photoshop User. Featured speaker at Photoshop World (Miami).

Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship — Yale School of Art
Traveling Fellowship — Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award — Best Computer Design Book (Art of Photoshop)
National Design Award — First Place, National Career Design Competition

Education

MFA — Bard College
BFA — School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Fellowship — Yale School of Art