Hi, I’m Ryan.
I lead UX for AI-powered features on Google Drive, defining interaction models for how users find, organize, and work with AI across a billion-user scale product. I'm a design leader and maker who brings business constraints, technical tradeoffs, and product strategy to the design conversation. PM directors and engineering leads trust me as a cross-functional partner because I think across their frameworks, not just my own. I stay close to the craft and never stopped designing.
For nearly a decade on Drive, I've led design across enterprise products, AI features, and cross-platform experiences. As an IC, I led Information Governance UX, which included Drive Labels, an enterprise classification system spanning Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides that directly unblocked a major enterprise deal by solving a flagship customer's non-negotiable security requirements. As a manager, I lead design strategy for Drive's AI investments and recently led a team of up to 14 designers through a major leadership transition, contributing to 100+ launches over my tenure. A peer described this period as “translating chaos into concrete, record-speed delivery.”
Earlier chapters
I grew up in Cleveland, where I spent weekends in fine art classes, drawing and making things. That's what led me to Industrial Design, which taught me to think in systems, work across constraints, and keep people at the center. I spent ten years at five startups, co-founded one, and helped drive three acquisitions by doing whatever the company needed: design, code, customer support, and admin work. At Salesforce, I led mobile design and co-created the Lightning Design System. Each chapter built a different muscle. Together, they're why I partner credibly with engineering and product, earning trust by understanding their constraints and speaking their language.
What's next
My next chapter tilts back toward making. After years leading teams and setting strategy, I want to get my hands on the work again, and this moment in AI rewards people who build. The problem I most want to build for is the design problem at the center of AI: helping people calibrate trust in systems that are confident by default.
I believe that for AI to earn trust, it must be useful, interpretable, and aligned with human intent. Design is how you hold that line.
Outside of work
Outside work: improvised music, board sports, meditation, and whatever book on consciousness, epistemology, or philosophy of mind is rewiring my assumptions this month.
