Well, hello!

I’m Kayla, technically a designer turned PMP-certfied project manager but I’ve never really stuck to just one role. Right out of college I was thrown into a startup as Creative Director and Brand manager and given a small team of young designers to bring the Founder and Investors vision to life. After that I was a State Program Manager for an organization focusing on getting more girls in STEM through mentorship. In that role I did everything from organize cross country calls to creating campaigns and toolkits, to designing and writing a mentorship guide. From there I went to a small design agency where I went from Project Coordinator, to Project Manager, to Director of Delivery over the 9 years I was there.

The one through-line in all of my professional career has been my love for helping folks solve problems. That could have been my small design team, my clients, or even the co-worker having a hard day. I like being at the frontlines of the mess and helping everyone see a path foward - and execute on it.

A girl’s got to stay creative though because even though I’m not design for work anymore, I still LOVE creative outlets. Some days that’s photography, interior decorating, playing in my closet, pattern making, coloring, or trying to recreate the best bolognese I’ve ever had. It just depends on the mood for the day.

I’m working on updating this website a bit to reflect who I’ve become over the last 9 years, but in the meantime I’ve got a brief overview of my work below.

I’d love to connect!

Project Experience

  • For Lensrentals, we were tasked with defining the core customers and personas, creating the voice and tone, and supporting the redesign. Through weekly and monthly touchpoints, I managed the client's budget and project progress as well as identified gaps in the project scope with the client, resulting in additional work.

    The project was delivered on time and on budget.

  • The Daily Memphian is a large paid online news publication focused on Memphis. I lead the project team through the redesign and worked with another company’s development team to coordinate an on-time and on-budget delivery.

  • Chattanooga commissioned a memorial to honor Ed Johnson, who was tragically lynched. We were brought on to create informational bronze plaques with The Ed Johnson Project Group that surround the main art piece of the memorial. We also created the print materials that supported the unveiling. I coordinated with several entities including city representatives to get this project done and even designed the print materials myself.

    The project launched on time and on budget.

  • Kin came to us to help with a complext platform migration and a tight turn-around time. It involved coordination from the platform team who was also handling migration, weekly QA cadence from the client, and a strict sprint/agile plan with our team.

    We launched on time and on budget and went on to work with them for the next 3 years.

  • The Seam is a software and commodities trading solution for agribusinesses. We were tasked with rearchitecting and redesigning their website. I was brought on to this project specifically to get it back on track as the timeline was critical.

    We launched on the client’s accelerated timeline.

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Work Snapshot