01. Design Leader

If you are serious about shipping product, you are serious about design. I have served as VP Design for startups backed by Sequoia Capital, IVP, General Catalyst, GV, UTA, and more. I have led hands-on design and development as a Principal, Director, and Head of UX within Adobe and Google. I’ve been paid to learn, and have deep acumen with FP&A, Legal, People Ops, DE&I, and the day-to-day operational skills to stoke the fire of a highly functioning team.

At any scale, I’m in-sync with the business. Let’s build a team from scratch with my network or continue building the team you have. Before joining Whatnot, I led design at Cameo during its hyper-growth stage. I carefully and quickly grew the team 7x into a diverse and distributed design team the business required to scale.

02. Principal Designer

The best companies are hiring Principals to push boundaries, run design critique, up-level craft, and create proprietary value that sets them apart from competitors. A Principal Designer paired with a design, product, or engineering executive is a powerful combination. Some of my best work has been done as a Principal Designer; it’s a lot of fun.

03. Design for a Strategic Project

You might have a product problem that needs some love within a constrained window of time. I can bring my diverse expertise to focus on your business-critical project. I am hands-on and can actively design in Figma and all of the modern collaborative design tools we use. I can work solo or as an addition to your team.

04. Design Advisor

Pre-seed, Seed, Series A, and beyond:

With 20+ years of experience in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and with studio activity abroad, I’ve seen a lot.

Conceiving and shipping original products is passionate work, and an advisor plays a role.

With my personal studio (Geoff Dowd, Design), I am actively advising companies on strategies for design that work today and well into later stages.

Related, one of my true joys is mentoring designers to be their best creative professional selves. I am currently mentoring designers from recent grads to very senior ones. This creates a reliable pipeline of talent for our teams, but more importantly – supports our Design industry and the future of creative professionals world-wide. This includes my two teen sons who have a bright future in creating product and art in the days to come, regardless of technology, platform, or trend.

References available upon request.