Chris Detzi

About Chris Detzi

Over the years I’ve learned that great products don’t come from design alone. They happen when people with shared interests align around customers and work toward the same outcome.That’s the environment I’ve spent my career creating.I’m an experience design leader with more than two decades of experience building and leading multidisciplinary design organizations and helping companies align design, product, and engineering around better customer outcomes. Much of my work sits at the intersection of systems, strategy, and people, helping teams navigate complexity, scale great experiences, and drive meaningful change across organizations.Some of the work I’m most proud of includes:• Building and scaling multidisciplinary experience design teams of 20+ designers, UX writers, and strategists, establishing leadership structures, hiring practices, and career development paths that strengthened design capability across the organization.• Leading the creation of an enterprise design system adopted by more than 100 applications, providing a shared foundation for product teams and generating more than $50M in avoided design and development costs through improved efficiency, reuse, and consistency.• Integrating design into the core product development lifecycle, introducing new collaboration models, governance practices, and delivery processes that strengthened alignment between design, product, and engineering teams.• Elevating the strategic role of design, helping shift it from a downstream service to a proactive partner in shaping product strategy and customer experience.At the core of my leadership approach is connecting people across functions and levels of the organization, helping teams move through change together and create the conditions for great work to happen. I’m particularly interested in Head of Experience Design and Design Leadership roles where design can meaningfully shape product strategy and customer experience.

Experience

1. Director, Enterprise and Shared Products Design

   Truist

   Nov 2023 — Present · Raleigh, NC, US

   Lead a multidisciplinary team of 20+ product designers responsible for improving client and teammate experiences across Truist’s enterprise products and services. Focused on scaling design impact through strong teams, shared systems, and deep partnership with product and engineering leadership.Signature achievement: Led the transformation of Truist’s enterprise design system into a foundational platform adopted by 100+ products and applications across the enterprise, generating $50M+ in design and development cost savings while accelerating product delivery across Truist.Key accomplishments• Scaled an enterprise design system into a critical product platform used by 100+ client- and teammate-facing products and applications across Truist, enabling consistency, reuse, and faster product development while delivering $50M+ in measurable efficiency gains.• Built and developed a high-performing design organization, growing and mentoring a team of 20+ designers while establishing operating models, collaboration frameworks, and delivery standards that consistently produce measurable business impact.• Cultivated one of the most engaged teams in the company, with engagement scores ranking in the top 5% organization-wide, reflecting a strong culture of ownership, growth, and accountability.• Elevated the role of design in product development, embedding design into the product lifecycle and championing cohesive, accessible, and user-centered experiences across enterprise platforms.

Education

• Penn State University

  Bachelor of Arts, Advertising/Public Relations

  1991 — 1995

Skills

• Creative Direction
• Heuristic Evaluation
• Wireframing
• Content Management
• Usability Testing
• Art Direction
• User-Centered Design
• User Experience
• Content Strategy
• User Interface Design
• Information Architecture
• Task Analysis
• E-Commerce
• User Experience Design
• Axure
• Ethnography
• Rapid Prototyping
• User Scenarios
• User Research
• Design Research
• Wireframes
• Mobile Design
• Stakeholder Management
• Information Design
• Card Sorting
• Site Maps
• Wire Framing
• Project Management
• Persona
• Usability
• Experience Design
• Usability Engineering
• User Interface
• Visual Design
• Mobile Applications
• Digital Strategy
• Contextual Inquiry
• Requirements Analysis
• Interaction Design
• Design Strategy