VANESSA ERICKSON 

​​​My journey into experience design has been an interesting one. I graduated from The University of Texas at San Antonio with a degree in Music Marketing, worked at Guitar Center, and had a home recording studio for several years. When I needed more stability, I went to work for USAA as a phone representative. After about four years, I was ready to see how I could make a bigger impact and was fortunate to find a job in Voiceline Design. It was all new to me, but my experience speaking with the members first hand reinforced my passion to improve our digital services. I took every opportunity to soak in our design principles, voice interaction design best practices, along with our visual and brand standards. To further expand my skill-set and network, I participated in any Innovation Event available to designers.

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I worked at USAA for over 10 years and spent 6 years implementing conversational AI designs for them. In my spare time, I participated in the learning programs USAA provided such as: Advanced Microsoft Excel courses, Crucial Conversations, Agile Methodologies, The Fundamentals of SCRUM and APO Certification.

I even became a Six Sigma Green Belt in process excellence and obtained a lifetime designation from Human Factors International as a Certified Usability Analyst.

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Next, I moved into to AI design at Capital One. In just two years I successfully pivoted our AI Answers team to being design led. Our answer creation process was unclear and inconsistent, so I led the initiative to document, review,  and improve our design process, which has since been adopted by our design, product and platform teams. As part of this process, I also created a reusable template for design documentation and streamlined our legal sign-off process. Earlier this year I was nominated and selected to participate in a women's leadership program called Leadhership1, where I've learned more about personal brand, mentorships and career advancement. In July 2021, I was promoted to Design Manager and worked to get new stakeholders engaged and invested in utilizing a new feature in the app.

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A trusted prior colleague of mine from Capital One had migrated over to Zeta Global and in my conversations with her, it became clear their team was in dire need of design operations help. I feel really fortunate that I was the first person she wanted to talk to and before I knew it, I had joined the Zeta Global team to help them solve the organizational and process challenges they were facing. Here, I've been able to establish order from chaos and foster a feeling of empowerment and mastery among the design team. I tend to do a bit of everything from scrum master, team coach, negotiator, content strategist, mentor, documentation of interaction design patterns, dot connector, drive alignment with executives, and so much more. 

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My goals are to always push forward and design experiences that go beyond people’s expectations while delivering them with what they need, when they need it. I’m constantly working on personal growth, building relationships, and sharing information with others so we can succeed together.

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I value honesty, collaboration, listening to the opinions of others, respecting one another and doing the right thing for people - both in the workplace and at home. I have a 12 year old son named Andrew who is my world and I work hard to bring these values to him as well. We love going to live shows, playing Magic the Gathering and going for walks. A few fun side notes, I love animals - I've got two cats (Peeta & Katniss) and one husky puppy named Domino. Though I haven't played recently, I’m a classically trained violinist and have played in community orchestras, indie bands and on the rare occasion with recording artists. More recently, I've been learning Jiu Jitsu and enjoy how it feels like a game of physical chess.