Darian O'Reilly
Head of Design at Lightci (Light Consulting)- Claim this Profile
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Bio
Emily de la Mettrie
I was a direct report to Darian during her time as Head of Design at Mission Lane and I couldn’t be more grateful for the time spent under her management. Working amidst challenging circumstances, Darian was able to carefully and expeditiously encourage best practices and processes for our team. Congruently, she swiftly made focused structural changes that set all verticals up for success. Darian has an uncanny design recall, and she was able to juggle multiple complex workstreams—and somehow remember each detail in all of them at the same time! During a time when we lacked formal Design Leads for each vertical, Darian conducted regular design reviews and remained available ad hoc at any time to support our team. She was a remarkably thorough and reactive design director who you could always count on for crisp, intelligent—and fun!—critique. I also found Darian to be a manager who is genuinely interested in the well-being and success of her reports, and who uses her energy to find ways and opportunities for them to shine. To me, she exemplifies what a manager is supposed to be but often isn't. In short, under Darian’s leadership, design at Mission Lane delivered better, more focused, higher-caliber work that both kept our stakeholders informed and brought them along for the ride. She deftly juggled business responsibilities and constraints while defending the best interests of her team (and the end customer), and we were all better for it. If you have a design team, you should absolutely hire Darian to manage it. Darian—I really hope we can work together again one day!
Shane Berry
Darian built and lead a fantastic team of designers through an eventful, formative, and tumultuous time for Mission Lane. She was thoughtful and empathetic in every aspect of her approach, deftly balancing the needs of her team with the needs of the business, always with an eye on providing real value to our customers. I learned a ton working with her. She developed a design-specific performance management and skills-development frameworks that kept her team highly-engaged and always moving forward. She developed a design process toolset that increased the team’s efficiency and consistency, while keeping stakeholders more informed and involved than ever before. And she wasn’t afraid to pinch-hit on some hands-on design work when the need arose (she’s no slouch there!). She also consistently challenged my thinking. She was never afraid to articulate and defend a well-considered point-of-view, even and especially when it wasn’t the consensus. That’s a tremendously valuable characteristic in a leader, and is the part of working with her that I’ll miss the most. In a perfect world, I’d get to work alongside Darian for a lot longer than I had a chance to. She’s truly excellent.
Emily de la Mettrie
I was a direct report to Darian during her time as Head of Design at Mission Lane and I couldn’t be more grateful for the time spent under her management. Working amidst challenging circumstances, Darian was able to carefully and expeditiously encourage best practices and processes for our team. Congruently, she swiftly made focused structural changes that set all verticals up for success. Darian has an uncanny design recall, and she was able to juggle multiple complex workstreams—and somehow remember each detail in all of them at the same time! During a time when we lacked formal Design Leads for each vertical, Darian conducted regular design reviews and remained available ad hoc at any time to support our team. She was a remarkably thorough and reactive design director who you could always count on for crisp, intelligent—and fun!—critique. I also found Darian to be a manager who is genuinely interested in the well-being and success of her reports, and who uses her energy to find ways and opportunities for them to shine. To me, she exemplifies what a manager is supposed to be but often isn't. In short, under Darian’s leadership, design at Mission Lane delivered better, more focused, higher-caliber work that both kept our stakeholders informed and brought them along for the ride. She deftly juggled business responsibilities and constraints while defending the best interests of her team (and the end customer), and we were all better for it. If you have a design team, you should absolutely hire Darian to manage it. Darian—I really hope we can work together again one day!
Shane Berry
Darian built and lead a fantastic team of designers through an eventful, formative, and tumultuous time for Mission Lane. She was thoughtful and empathetic in every aspect of her approach, deftly balancing the needs of her team with the needs of the business, always with an eye on providing real value to our customers. I learned a ton working with her. She developed a design-specific performance management and skills-development frameworks that kept her team highly-engaged and always moving forward. She developed a design process toolset that increased the team’s efficiency and consistency, while keeping stakeholders more informed and involved than ever before. And she wasn’t afraid to pinch-hit on some hands-on design work when the need arose (she’s no slouch there!). She also consistently challenged my thinking. She was never afraid to articulate and defend a well-considered point-of-view, even and especially when it wasn’t the consensus. That’s a tremendously valuable characteristic in a leader, and is the part of working with her that I’ll miss the most. In a perfect world, I’d get to work alongside Darian for a lot longer than I had a chance to. She’s truly excellent.
Emily de la Mettrie
I was a direct report to Darian during her time as Head of Design at Mission Lane and I couldn’t be more grateful for the time spent under her management. Working amidst challenging circumstances, Darian was able to carefully and expeditiously encourage best practices and processes for our team. Congruently, she swiftly made focused structural changes that set all verticals up for success. Darian has an uncanny design recall, and she was able to juggle multiple complex workstreams—and somehow remember each detail in all of them at the same time! During a time when we lacked formal Design Leads for each vertical, Darian conducted regular design reviews and remained available ad hoc at any time to support our team. She was a remarkably thorough and reactive design director who you could always count on for crisp, intelligent—and fun!—critique. I also found Darian to be a manager who is genuinely interested in the well-being and success of her reports, and who uses her energy to find ways and opportunities for them to shine. To me, she exemplifies what a manager is supposed to be but often isn't. In short, under Darian’s leadership, design at Mission Lane delivered better, more focused, higher-caliber work that both kept our stakeholders informed and brought them along for the ride. She deftly juggled business responsibilities and constraints while defending the best interests of her team (and the end customer), and we were all better for it. If you have a design team, you should absolutely hire Darian to manage it. Darian—I really hope we can work together again one day!
Shane Berry
Darian built and lead a fantastic team of designers through an eventful, formative, and tumultuous time for Mission Lane. She was thoughtful and empathetic in every aspect of her approach, deftly balancing the needs of her team with the needs of the business, always with an eye on providing real value to our customers. I learned a ton working with her. She developed a design-specific performance management and skills-development frameworks that kept her team highly-engaged and always moving forward. She developed a design process toolset that increased the team’s efficiency and consistency, while keeping stakeholders more informed and involved than ever before. And she wasn’t afraid to pinch-hit on some hands-on design work when the need arose (she’s no slouch there!). She also consistently challenged my thinking. She was never afraid to articulate and defend a well-considered point-of-view, even and especially when it wasn’t the consensus. That’s a tremendously valuable characteristic in a leader, and is the part of working with her that I’ll miss the most. In a perfect world, I’d get to work alongside Darian for a lot longer than I had a chance to. She’s truly excellent.
Emily de la Mettrie
I was a direct report to Darian during her time as Head of Design at Mission Lane and I couldn’t be more grateful for the time spent under her management. Working amidst challenging circumstances, Darian was able to carefully and expeditiously encourage best practices and processes for our team. Congruently, she swiftly made focused structural changes that set all verticals up for success. Darian has an uncanny design recall, and she was able to juggle multiple complex workstreams—and somehow remember each detail in all of them at the same time! During a time when we lacked formal Design Leads for each vertical, Darian conducted regular design reviews and remained available ad hoc at any time to support our team. She was a remarkably thorough and reactive design director who you could always count on for crisp, intelligent—and fun!—critique. I also found Darian to be a manager who is genuinely interested in the well-being and success of her reports, and who uses her energy to find ways and opportunities for them to shine. To me, she exemplifies what a manager is supposed to be but often isn't. In short, under Darian’s leadership, design at Mission Lane delivered better, more focused, higher-caliber work that both kept our stakeholders informed and brought them along for the ride. She deftly juggled business responsibilities and constraints while defending the best interests of her team (and the end customer), and we were all better for it. If you have a design team, you should absolutely hire Darian to manage it. Darian—I really hope we can work together again one day!
Shane Berry
Darian built and lead a fantastic team of designers through an eventful, formative, and tumultuous time for Mission Lane. She was thoughtful and empathetic in every aspect of her approach, deftly balancing the needs of her team with the needs of the business, always with an eye on providing real value to our customers. I learned a ton working with her. She developed a design-specific performance management and skills-development frameworks that kept her team highly-engaged and always moving forward. She developed a design process toolset that increased the team’s efficiency and consistency, while keeping stakeholders more informed and involved than ever before. And she wasn’t afraid to pinch-hit on some hands-on design work when the need arose (she’s no slouch there!). She also consistently challenged my thinking. She was never afraid to articulate and defend a well-considered point-of-view, even and especially when it wasn’t the consensus. That’s a tremendously valuable characteristic in a leader, and is the part of working with her that I’ll miss the most. In a perfect world, I’d get to work alongside Darian for a lot longer than I had a chance to. She’s truly excellent.
Experience
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Lightci (Light Consulting)
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Canada
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Software Development
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1 - 100 Employee
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Head of Design
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Aug 2023 - Present
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Mission Lane
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United States
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Financial Services
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200 - 300 Employee
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Head Of Design
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May 2022 - Jun 2023
• Led and mentored a remote first team of 11 product and marketing designers and managers • Developed design team’s growth through real-time design feedback and coaching, collaborative work, performance management, and goal setting • Scaled the design team from 5-11 in a period of six months • Oversaw the team's efforts across a suite of six products, partnering closely with product, data, growth, and engineering to ensure strong execution from concept through launch • Partnered with executive leadership in shaping the strategic direction of Mission Lane’s products • Nurtured and amplified the team’s supportive, high-performance culture • Drove connectivity across teams, ensuring a unified, holistic approach to product • Established appropriate systems and processes; enabling teams to consistently ship with high quality and velocity keeping Design Thinking principles top of mind at all times Show less
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Bread Financial
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United States
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Financial Services
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700 & Above Employee
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Senior Manager, Product Design
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Apr 2021 - Apr 2022
• Led, managed, and scaled fully distributed product design teams for Bread's personal loans, embedded application and checkout experience, merchant portal, and mobile app• Worked with senior leadership, external stakeholders, and partners to move product team initiatives forward to support company health and growth• Scaled and developed a team of 5 junior and senior product designers to level up both tactical and professional skill sets, building and promoting collaborative cross-squad design culture through weekly design critiques and workshops• Guided design team through major company acquisition, transitioning from mid size start-up (~250) to major corporate entity (~8,000) • Led the design team for Bread Loans, a net-new personal loan product, from 0-1 early stage strategy to launch. This new product line tracked to more than double revenue goals for its initial phase.• Launched Bread's first in-store offering in partnership with Fiserv to provide BNPL options to 1MM+ Clover merchants.• Oversaw design and research for creation of the Bread 2.0 Merchant Portal encompassing both parity and net-new features for the 1000+ Merchants migrating from the Classic Platform.• Partnered with Product Management and Engineering Leads to determine strategy and roadmap for our Agile squad• Managed both internal and external user research efforts including discovery workshops, journey mapping, card sorting, surveys, and freeform brainstorming sessions with SMEs and stakeholders Show less
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Lead Product Designer
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Jul 2020 - Apr 2021
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CentralReach
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United States
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Software Development
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200 - 300 Employee
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Founding Product Designer
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Nov 2018 - May 2020
• Built and led experience design team across a suite of six products • Managed team scheduling, timelines, estimation, and career development for UX team of designers, architects, and researchers • Partnered with product owners and engineering teams on achievable product roadmaps, backlog management, design spike resolution, and sprint cycle management in an agile product environment • Created custom interactive data visualizations that uncover financial opportunity, track performance KPIs, align to industry benchmarking, and set individual practice targets for CR Insights, a business intelligence analytics tool for clinical and practice management applications • Managed ongoing creation and application of a company-wide design language through the use of atomic design component library • Provided creative oversight to design teams within product and corporate marketing functions Show less
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Infragistics
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United States
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Software Development
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100 - 200 Employee
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Lead Product Designer
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Aug 2015 - Oct 2018
• Led a team of two product designers in moving forward project initiatives and keeping design process on track • Consistently delighted clients by leading a strong and user centered design process from concept to completion of web, enterprise, SaaS, and mobile solutions • Crafted visually stunning designs with purpose • Designed compelling and highly interactive data visualizations for external clients • Created wireframes and high fidelity rapid prototypes • Facilitated design workshops and UX requirements gathering • Performed user research and testing • Collaborated and iterated with remote international team of UX Architects and UI Developers Clients Include: The American Institute of CPAs, ASSA ABLOY, BAI, The Doctors Company, Ecteon, Efficient Capital Management, IEEE, Johnson & Johnson, Keysight Technologies, Merit Market, Penn State University, QRC Analytics, Trimble, V.Ships Show less
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Meridian Health
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United States
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Wellness and Fitness Services
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1 - 100 Employee
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Lead UX Designer
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Mar 2012 - Aug 2015
• Lead design and content teams in the effort to redesign, restructure, and rebuild Meridian Health's 800+ page responsive site on a new CMS SaaS platform • Designed and programmed responsive sites for Meridian Weightless, Meridian Urgent Care, and AfterHours Immediate Care • Re-Designed and implemented new strategy and look for Doctor Bernard's Kids Clubhouse increasing site visits by 166% • Managed redesign and development of Meridian Momtourage, a 150+ page online community and health resource for women in Monmouth and Ocean Counties Show less
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Senior UX Designer
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Dec 2007 - Feb 2012
• Acted as sole designer, information architect, and developer for various interactive projects for agencies and direct clients including Meals on Wheels, Autism Speaks, The Wellness Circle, Mortgage Market Guide, Seasonal World, and Friends of Jazz • Collaborated with in-house project teams to complete sites to specifications • Redesigned, developed, and optimized nonprofit site directed at seniors and their caregivers resulting in a 400% increase in total traffic over a period of 4 months • Redesigned and developed 150-page consumer website for New Jersey's leading swimming pool installer • Executed conceptual planning, architecture, and design of "The Entertainer" iPhone app Show less
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Education
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Columbia University in the City of New York
BA, Sociology
Community
