Brad Neal

About Brad Neal

Brad Neal is a seasoned designer and design leader of twenty plus years with deep roots in both agencies and enterprise product design. He’s a dedicated player / coach with a passion for growing designer craft, cultivating healthy design culture and delivering experiences at scale that eclipse user expectations and drive business value. Brad has led the delivery of award-winning work across multiple spaces including cloud data warehousing, data monitoring and observability, insurance, fintech, financial crimes investigation, GRC (governance, risk and compliance), automotive, commerce and global travel. A natural leader, Brad excels in casting bold, ambitious product visions and aligning cross-disciplinary teams in pursuit of bringing them to life. His inclusive, human-centric approach to product design has led to multiple 0-1 innovations, resulting in kinetic business growth and end user satisfaction.

Experience

1. Director of Design Foundations

   Workiva

   Sep 2024 — Present

   Creator and Director of Workiva’s first Design Foundations team and program — driving consistency, efficiency, and user experience excellence across our multi-product enterprise platform. Our Design Foundations team acts as a force multiplier, improving both design and development velocity, accessibility, and UX quality at scale. We partner cross-functionally to ensure every product designer and engineer can swiftly ship elegant, consistent, and user-centered solutions. Our core offering, Unify Design System, is the backbone of our UX infrastructure, which serves as the foundation for all product experiences at Workiva—adopted by 10+ product teams and powering hundreds of components & patterns in production. We additionally support product designer growth through curated initiatives tailored to the individual and their desired career trajectory. This includes growth frameworks, mentoring / coaching, resources, and internal mobility initiatives designed to accelerate both craft and career advancement.

Education

• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  BFA - Graphic Design

  1999 — 2005

• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  BFA - Art History, Graphic Design

  1999 — 2005

Skills

• Interaction Design
• Creative Direction
• Concept Development
• Experience Design
• Information Architecture
• Interactive Advertising
• Information Design
• Typography
• Wireframes
• User-Centered Design
• Flash
• Art Direction
• User Interface Design
• User Experience Design
• Graphic Design
• Digital Strategy
• User Experience
• Image Manipulation