Karen Ma

I'm currently taking a detour from my design career to work in education policy. In my most recent role, I led a team for 4 designers at SingleStore as Director, Head of UX. I was responsible for the user experience across the product, including Security, Developer Experience, Growth and Database Adminstration. As a player/coach, I was hands-on for high profile projects and within our design system while also coaching team members to challenge their skillset and partner on large-scale design projects to get them from start to finish.

I started my career in product design because of my interest in Cognitive Science; I loved the interaction between the behavioral research and analytics and the technical applications of the field. In my career, I’ve worked at multiple growth-stage startups, as an early design member, setting the stage for the design culture. My specialty has been bringing a pragmatic execution to complex problem spaces, including databases, risk management, and financial investment.

Work keeps me engaged when I have flexibility to zoom in and out, working on product and process. I enjoy defining high-level product vision and strategy as well as taking a magnifying glass to the finer details of what we’ve shipped. I've found it is important to me to define processes and explore ways to improve team workflow where I can. I believe product design needs to work well with all departments and I love to be in an environment where I can embed cross-functionally.