Leadership

“I've gotta give a Kudos to Deidre her for incredible leadership and management style she navigated our team through times of ambiguity, while quickly and smoothly ramping up multiple new team members from Noogler to Googler. Her inter-personal skills created a innovate environment with clear direction and a tight knit team which made doing my best work easy.” -Direct Report, Google

“Deidre, thank you for all the time and energy you’ve invested in me as a person and as a designer! I truly appreciate and have grown tremendously during my time on your team, and much of that is thanks to the complex and exciting design challenges you trusted me with. I wish you all the best in the upcoming year, and am excited to see all of the awesome design work the team creates!” -Direct Report, Google

"When opportunities arise that need a champion or owner Deidre regularly volunteers. Her efforts have helped to build and define our design studio culture." -Director, Amazon

"Deidre creates action plans that have an exactness and accuracy of detail. She communicates a vivid vision for our team's structure." - Direct Report, Amazon

"Deidre treats all team members respectfully. She always listens to team member's different thoughts and then make right decision on vision of team development and exposure. She always helps every team member grow in the way that they desire and provides available resources to support their growth. What she does makes me redefine what it means to be a manager." -Direct Report,  Amazon

"Deidre understands how to set goals and manage her team to achieve them. Our org is composed of many teams so Deidre's ability to work with and understand the team dynamics has been beneficial to the team." -Direct Report, Amazon

“Deidre has done a great job ramping up and taking charge of her team. She’s working through several difficult challenges like building a brand new horizontal team within a very technical space. Additionally, she has navigated a politically sensitive area really well and worked to get the desired outcomes for the DevOps org.” -Direct Manager, Google

"You came into the organization and immediately looked for ways to challenge and strengthen your team. You have a strong draw to process and getting clarity and alignment on the best ways to organize and get things done. You have shown a passion for cross-team efforts within HCD." - Direct Manager, Amazon

"Deidre's optimism is by far her best superpower. This helps her to lead her team through very trying times and helps build relationships with external teams. I was able to directly observe this during the early discussions she led with the Amazon Robotics team." -Principal UX Designer, Amazon

"Deidre is very focused on her team's growth and learning. Since coming to HCD, she's taken the lead on a handful of org wide initiatives such as the Monthly UX Manager's meeting and the UX Lunch & Learn series. She is growing HCD as a learning organization." -Sr. Manager, Amazon

"Deidre's superpower is her ability to enshrine ownership in her team by growing a strong project management acumen among her direct reports. She pushes her team to Thin Big by understanding what objectives they are driving toward and how to focus on the highest impact work." -Sr. UX Researcher, Amazon

"Deidre drove the design of a user experience to aid in discovering relevant people, content, and other content based on the context of what the user is doing as well as their history. (i.e. a predictive analytics recommendation engine). She took us through visioning, contextual inquiry and presumptive design iterations - from low fidelity sketches to interactive prototypes that were validated with our intended audience (users). She is skilled at pulling the different perspectives of software developers, architects, analysts and product owners together and map them to user stories and other design artifacts. Very professional, she moves rapidly and get valuable work done!" -Principal/Staff Engineer, Intel

“Deidre is tenacious, persistent, and savvy in ways of people and organizations. I have found her work to be thorough, well conceived, clearly written and of the highest caliber. She has demonstrated excellence in a variety of professional settings. She is both results oriented and capable of meeting challenging goals. I see her as a motivated self-starter, able to be proactive when needed; yet, pleasant to work with and a team player. She is one of the most competent professionals with whom I have had the pleasure to work and I recommend her highly and without reservations. I encourage you to take the time to talk with her yourself.” --Principal UX Designer/Architect, Intel

"Deidre is extremely customer-centric in what she does and looks to try and instill these values into the business. She is extremely strong in teams and has an extremely valuable skill set that can help reach across Emerson Network Power business units and allow us to create a user experience for our customers. This is going to be key as we go into the future. I am excited her team is helping to impact the future look and feel. This is going to be key as we go into the future as a new company (Vertiv). This is a great opportunity to drive change within the organization and see Deidre as a key player in this." - Vice President of Marketing, Emerson Network Power

"Deidre took on a leadership role in this area and rolled out processes to support multiple organizations and drive towards a common goal, The feedback below from the Vice-President of our Thermal Business Division was echoed this year (2014) by many others: Deidre
 “Wanted to let you know how much we have enjoyed working with Deidre. She is very knowledgeable, well organized and easy to work with. She has done an excellent job on the iCOM project and has gone above and beyond to make sure the project will be successful. Thank you for her support.” - 
-Director of Project Management, Emerson Network Power

"She has driven this process (User Experience/Human Factors) as a best practice within the company and it is becoming more widely adopted. She has definitely brought new ways of thinking into the business and a different way of questioning which has helped focus on what matters. Deidre works well with others and has generally positive feedback from her team and peers. She has demonstrated the ability to pull together people from other functions and get them to participate in workshops and other collaborative activities." -Director of Product Management, Emerson Network Power

"I worked with Deidre on the Alabama Power Customer Service project that changed ho communications are delivered throughout the Southern Company footprint. She was influential in choosing an appropriate technology vendor to help revolutionize real-time communications at Southern Company. Deidre provided key leadership throughout the life cycle of the project and helped establish the project's technology environment, select key test users, and deliver communications to the key stakeholders of the project." -Senior Software Engineer, Southern Company

Teamwork & Collaboration

“First she has a superb understanding of the unspoken needs of a project. She networks incessantly, listening, contributing and building an understanding of the business and the teams within it. Her knowledge extends far beyond the business and technical problem of the moment and allows her to see the big picture - not just in terms of concepts and applications but in terms of people and goals. Second, she brings out the best in those that work with her. I'd compare her to an excellent point guard in the NBA. Maybe a Jason Kidd. She knows when and where to feed the ball to bring out the best in those she works with. Even when is she isn't scoring herself, she encourages and focuses on those around her - creating more from those who work with her than the sum of their parts.”  -Business Analyst, Nike Inc.  

"Deidre was a wonderful person to work with. She is someone who not only brings a very strong analyst skill set but also very strong interpersonal skills and an ability to work with everyone on the team." - Software Engineering Manager, Nike

"Deidre was instrumental in setting the direction of the project we are working on. She did a great job communicating a new process to the team and explaining why we were going through the process. While the team understood user experience design on a base level, implementing a large scale project was something new to the team where we started with a UX process. She was very patient with the team, listened to the concerns but ultimately kept the team on track with a vision. I believe Deidre showed strong leadership and obviously strong UX skills. On top of her skillset, she was also very fun to work with and seemed to care about the people she was working with." - Business Analyst, Intel

Simplifying & Connecting the Dots

“Deidre was always a positive force on our project and was able to navigate a complex and often times ambiguous domain with relative ease.”  -Lead Application Engineer, Nike

“Deidre is a dedicated professional who I could always depend on to drive best practices perspectives into methods and practices.  I leaned on Deidre a great deal for her creativity and willingness to roll up her sleeves and drive clarity and structure out of a horde of ambiguity.” -Customer Data Manager, Intel Corp.

“Deidre is quick to identify possible mismatches between desired state and the reality and she offers avenues for resolving gaps.”   -Product Design Manager, Intel Corp.

“Deidre asks the right questions to drive clarity and in the end is able to help our business partners clearly articulate their needs. She is very process and detailed oriented and it shows in the quality of work she presents.”  -Product Manager, Intel Corp. 

Design Thinking & Creativity

“Deidre has enabled my organization, via design and maintenance of the website, to increase its visibility and membership services. She is able to transform a simple concept into an effective marketing/public relations tool. More importantly, Deidre is responsive and attentive to her clients' requests and service needs" -Executive Director of a National Non-Profit Organization

“Whenever a freelance designer/developer is needed, Deidre is always the first person to pop into my mind. She approaches each job with a creative eye and good business sense. She’s a detail oriented conscientious worker who always brings her best to the task at hand. I’d recommend Deidre to anyone needing a talented, dedicated web designer who never disappoints” -Director of Online Marketing & Brand Strategy, Major National Magazine

"Our organization's website was poor at best and needed a major retooling. Deidre led the effort to do that and results are amazing. Deidre is an expert and a professional at what she does and we greatly appreciate her work." -Vice-President of Customer Service, Alabama Power Company

"Deidre, I want to thank you for what I thought was an excellent event (Product Vision Workshop). You have helped to inspire a group of sometimes 'set in our ways' engineers. All of the feedback was positive, and I look forward to seeing this taken to the next level." - Vice-President of Global Marketing, Liebert / AC Power