Sallie
Senior Director, Customer Experience / Head of Design
Modernizing for the next generation of students and their parents.
Sallie Mae, the largest private student lender in the United States, was at a pivotal moment of reinvention after the pandemic. The company needed to grow beyond its legacy identity and build new customer relationships rooted in clarity, accessibility, and trust. At the same time, colleagues were operating without shared research practices, scalable systems, or standardized delivery models.
My mandate in 2022 was to raise the quality and consistency of the customer experiences while maturing the design and digital product organization into modern, scalable, insight-driven business functions.
Approach
I focused my leadership across three strategic tracks:
Elevating the Customer
I led the design and launch of a new website and loan application experience, introduced two new consumer products, and helped redefine self-service across web and mobile platforms. We also implemented WCAG AA accessibility standards and developed a extensible SEO-friendly content architecture to improve clarity and confidence across planning and borrowing experiences.
Launched the company’s first enterprise design system utilized for all communications and experiences
Introduced centralized customer research practice
Established a unified content architecture
Building a Scalable CX and Design Practice
To increase team effectiveness and be a strategic business driver, I:
Standardized process and priorities through OKRs, career frameworks, and service-level agreements
Implemented new tools and design & content operations workflows
Defined a repeatable collaboration model with cross-functional teams
Shaping the Future of the Business
I partnered with marketing, product, operations, and technology leadership to co-develop a future vision and experience roadmap for the enterprise. These initiatives informed new go-to-market strategies and long-term experience investment planning.
Impact
33%
Increase in leads
22%
Increase in Application Conversions
$34m
Incremental Monthly Revenue
2x
Growth in team size–enhancing UX, research, content strategy, and creative technology
16%
Service cost reductions–eliminating paper/postage costs and reducing call handling times
Improvements to velocity and delivery confidence through process and collaboration efficiencies gained
10x
Takeaways
Sallie Mae is now Sallie, an Education Solutions company.
This work demonstrated that a small but strategic team—when empowered with the right systems, trust, and voice—can deliver meaningful business value while modernizing the entire customer relationship. It also reinforced my belief that a strong CX & design practice isn’t built on velocity alone, but on repeatable impact, measurable outcomes, and thoughtful partnerships.