Refe Tuma

Design leader

Design executive with 10+ years of experience building and leading high-performing teams and driving user-centered product innovation. I specialize in digital transformation, aligning design with business strategy, scaling operations, and delivering measurable impact.

Proven leadership

Establishing and supporting strategic vision, standards, processes, and tools for product design, design systems, user research, and cross-functional collaboration.

Building and developing high-functioning teams of designers, researchers, and design leaders.

Working across disciplines to enhance and promote great end-to-end customer experiences from brand awareness to retention.

Industry expertise

Finance

Designing digital products that simplify financial management for consumers and industry professionals, including 401(k) portals, mutual funds processing applications, and a D2C mobile investing app.

e-Commerce

Creating irresistible consumer experiences in fashion, sportswear, wine & spirits, and more.

Automotive

Growing an industry-leading, two-sided automotive wholesale marketplace supporting the entire wholesaling lifecycle, from inspection to arbitration.

Chronological experience

Director of User Experience / OPENLANE

July 2021 - Present

  • Built a product design organization from the ground up, recruiting, training, and leading a team of six product designers in my first two years, introducing scalable processes, design principles, and performance metrics that elevated consistency and impact

  • Provide visionary and strategic leadership within product, brand, and marketing organizations

  • Led company-wide rebrand effort and established a flexible, robust design system utilizing design tokens and Figma developer tools

  • Directed multiple large-scale redesigns across web and mobile platforms that exceeded target metrics, including key conversion rates, daily active users, customer satisfaction, and customer retention

  • Extensive experience leading cross-functional teams including both internal and third-party collaborators and stakeholders

  • Regularly present product updates to the board and executive stakeholders; maintain close collaboration with product, engineering, QA, and operations to ensure successful execution and timely, on-budget releases

  • Pioneering research and experimentation with AI-assisted design processes utilizing Cline and other tools/models

Experience Design Lead / DEG (Merkle)

October 2017 - July 2021

  • Founded and scaled the experience design function from 0 to 4 full-time designers within three years while managing a reliable pool of contractors

  • Recruited, mentored, and led a team of full-time experience designers, along with consistent stable of independent contractors

  • Led integration of new UX function and process into the larger organization, defining effective, repeatable methods for research, design, and user testing; guided cross-functional teams to design and build delightful experiences

  • Designed and built maps, flows, and prototypes for new and enhanced digital experiences across a variety of platforms for a diverse and constantly changing portfolio of clients

  • Facilitated collaborative design workshops for strategy, ideation, and exploration, from high-level process diagrams to micro-interactions

  • Led virtual and on-site design ops management for clients, providing process management, customer research and experience strategy, backlog grooming, user testing, and design sprint planning

User Experience Designer / DST (SS&C)

May 2012 - October 2017

  • Led design for $100M retirement division across diverse portfolio of legacy and web-based products and services

  • Conducted over 100 customer interviews, creating user personas, journey maps, and vision documents that influenced product strategy, service design, and corporate culture.

  • Led internal research initiative that produced dramatic improvements to new associate training, resulting in higher engagement scores, retention, and customer satisfaction

  • Guided business leaders through collaborative design workshops to align around product road map definition, key performance indicators, hypothesis development, customer research planning, tactical design cycles, and user validation

Technical Recruiter / Various

March 2008 - May 2012

  • Sourced, hired, and maintained a network of web designers, software developers, architects, project managers, and other technology professionals.

Other experience

Author and presenter

February 2008 - Present

  • Keynote speaker on UX, design leadership, and creativity at events including Delight Summit, Creative Mornings, and the Lincoln Center

  • Author of middle-grade novels Frances and the Monster and Frances and the Werewolves of the Black Forest (2022, 2023 HarperCollins), winner of the Page Turner Award and Bram Stoker Award finalist.

  • Co-created the internationally recognized What the Dinosaurs Did picture book series and launched Dinovember, a global creative event with 250,000+ participants

Contact me

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