Experience
By Tobi Jo Lebron · 90% human, thoughts organized in Notebook LM
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AI Native & Gen UI
Personally tapped by senior executives to lead GCP console’s horizontal innovation lab. Driving vision and execution for platform-wide programs for generative UI and AI native concepts. Work is under NDA.
Responsible AI Founder and hands-on lead for GCP's first AI Trust & Agency program, focused on building trust in AI systems. Authored extensive thought-leadership, risk frameworks and guidelines. My public writing on AI Trust & Agency has reached over 170k readers on LinkedIn and Medium.
Cloud Hub Cloud Hub is a new AI-friendly dashboarding system that centralizes critical metrics from 41 APIs into a single, customer-loved view. I was the head of design, guiding the work of 194 Googlers for its 0-1 definition, execution, and optimization. 4M monthly active users. Awarded Customer Empathy Award by Google Cloud CEO. Press Release
AI Mainframe Application Modernization Product, design and research lead for a new, AI code refactoring tool. I partnered directly with Principal Engineers and Google DeepMind to build the end-to-end product strategy and design this market differentiator. Beta releases have secured 4+ enterprise partnerships. Demo
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Global Organization Building
Built, led a 9-person global multidisciplinary UX team for a new design sub-system. Led research, design, execution of 4 new page-level Angular components for the most common pages. Owned priorities, staffing, execution, team culture across Seattle, New York, Bangalore.
Strategy & Executive Alignment Broke through a years-long quagmire to align 30 platform leads and define a 3-year strategy, success definition, measurement program.
Scaled Operationalization Worked closely with product and engineering leads to canonize page-level patterns as the official method for implementing CRUD (create, read, update, delete) pages. Evangelized page-level patterns to earn pilot partners, and then they became evangelists for our work.
Success Definition & Metrics Program Defined a rigorous metrics framework and aligned the approach and method with a dozen executive stakeholders.
Cost Savings Adopted by 192 ENG projects in 4 years. Teams save ~2 months per insert, saving the platform a projected 85 person-years.
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UX Organizational Leadership
Head of the 21-person multidisciplinary Storage UX team located in Seattle, New York, Tel Aviv. Owned priorities, staffing, execution, team culture across Cloud Storage portfolio: 7 products, 50 partners. Reshaped the flat legacy team into 4 focused teams. Elevated design leaders, hired Research Manager to organize a formal research function. Funded, hired +2 quant researchers.
Executive Stakeholder Collaboration Worked directly with cross-functional execs to align priorities, staffing. Introduced UX OKRs to the official roadmap.
Product Leader & Driver of Impact Led team to deliver insights, design, accessibility ENG, writing for 21+ roadmap commitments securing Cloud Storage’s position as a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader. Major launches include: Backup for GKE, acquisition of Elastifile, Public Access Prevention. Conceived, executed User Voice metrics and fixit program, driving +11 pts NPS for Cloud Storage.
Team Culture Champion Increased team sentiment categories: Strategic Alignment (+36 pts), Accessibility Practice (+52 pts), Decision Making Speed (+36 pts).
- Contract Group UX Director, AKQA Head UX for the 60-person Verizon account team, responsible for all service experiences across responsive web and native mobile applications.
- Contract UX Director, SapientRazorfish Oversaw the $6M retail transformation account for Bed Bath & Beyond and Buy Buy Baby.
2010 – 2014
HUGE
Associate UX Director
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Vision & Strategy
Directed vision, strategy, prototyping for multi-channel digital transformation for AARP, Target, Capital One, and the Mayor’s Office of New York.
HUGE School Director Program director and teacher for HUGE School an accelerated, paid apprenticeship and training program specializing in Product, Research Design and Strategy.
2009 – 2010
Tobi Jo Creative
Founder & Principal
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Large-Scale Government Projects
Lead a 10-person boutique digital design, research, and strategy firm for contracts including: New York State Energy Research & Development Authority ~2000 page website redesign, New York State Business Express portal ground-breaking unification of business applications across 5 state agencies.
Awarded the CODiE Award, Best Business Directory Design in partnership with Cohere Studios.
2005 – 2009
Time Inc.
Lead Interaction Designer
- Planned and executed user-centered digital redesigns for 6 lifestyle magazines, earning two Webby Awards and one MIN Award. Established Time Inc.'s first design system. Partnered with data librarians to design early algorithmic recommendation systems, faceted search, and structured content schemas, optimizing discoverability for millions of daily active readers.