I argued the framing was the real problem. I renamed the work Relevancy — the right level of targeting plus the right level of storytelling, run together — and built three things every team could share: shared rules, shared tools, shared success metrics. Then I put a number on what the old way was costing us, so investing in the foundation became the obvious call.

It’s now a funded program with three executive sponsors.

• My role: Senior Product Manager, Relevancy Strategy & Connected Platforms. I wrote the strategy and built the frameworks; execution sat with the workstream teams.
• What I delivered: Shared rules, shared tools, and shared success metrics, plus the business case that funded them.
• Who I worked with: 16+ partner teams. Data Science owned the models, Digital Experience owned the surfaces, Kroger Precision Marketing owned monetization. I owned the rules they all had to agree on.
• Where it landed: A funded program in the millions, three executive sponsors, two co-leads, multiple experiments live in market.

A survey and 13 interviews later, I was confident the comms problem was a symptom. There was no standard for how work got prioritized, no clarity on who decided what, and no consistent process behind how any of it got positioned. So I built the layer underneath: a five-layer operating model, plus the ~14 templates and rubrics to run it, plus the case for a dedicated role to own it going forward.

Leadership backed the bigger idea.

• My role: Sole product strategist and operating-model designer. A side-of-desk assignment.
• What I delivered: A five-layer operating model, ~14 reusable frameworks, a handover guide, and the business case for the role that should own it.
• Who I worked with: 13 leaders across 7 groups that don’t normally talk to each other. Three of them would have to enforce whatever I built, so I validated with them directly.
• Where it landed: Endorsed by senior leadership as “the spine of everything going forward,” plus a funded Product Marketing Manager role with a 30/60/90 plan waiting for them.

Everyone wanted the value of combined customer data. Nobody wanted the unglamorous part, which was this: real people already existed in both systems. Get that wrong and you either fail to recognize someone you know, or you merge two strangers into one account.

So I went after the messiest part first. I split “collision” into five distinct cases with five different risk profiles, and set one hard rule: never merge on matching attributes alone.

• My role: Senior Product and Architecture Strategist on a small, senior, cross-company tiger team. I owned identity resolution and collision strategy end to end.
• What I delivered: An identity-resolution framework tying match signal to confidence level to action, a five-case taxonomy of customer collision, and a documented set of open decisions with owners named.
• Who I worked with: Data, analytics, legal and privacy, and loyalty stakeholders across two companies that had never worked together. Legal owned what could even be discussed. I owned turning the ambiguity into decisions.
• Where it landed: The transaction didn’t proceed. The frameworks did — they’re now how the enterprise approaches combining customer data inside its own systems.

Kroger’s instinct was to use in-store moments to pull shoppers into digital. I bet the opposite: augment the store trip, don’t replace it. Store Mode became opt-in and additive, and once the mandate was “augment,” five disconnected features could finally be understood as one thing — a digital shopping assistant.

After pursuing this vision, the engaged in-store segment outperformed the app on every dimension we measured.

• My role: Lead Product Designer, then Senior Manager of Product Design for the In-Store Domain. I led feature work first, then authored the domain vision and roadmap.
• What I delivered: A three-phase Now / Next / Later roadmap, a “digital shopping assistant” strategy that connected five siloed features into one portfolio, and the Store Mode redesign that proved it.
• Who I worked with: Product and engineering owned the builds I was connecting. Analytics owned measurement. Legal owned geolocation and privacy compliance. I owned the vision, the sequencing, and convincing leadership it mattered.
• Where it landed: +25% AOV and +23% unique customers in the engaged in-store segment, exit rate from ~10% to near zero, and in-store recognized as a real product domain with its own roadmap.