Jonathan Stephens

About Jonathan Stephens

I\'m Jonathan—a multidisciplinary product leader with 18+ years experience managing & building products, teams, and orgs for global enterprises, agencies, and start-ups. I excel at aligning people, processes, and products towards organizational goals using holistic, systems thinking and continuous, iterative improvement.I bridge the gap between technical teams and stakeholders by leveraging my bottom-up nonlinear thinking style, situational leadership, and data-informed decision making. I facilitate clarity, cultivate alignment, and generate momentum.I’m known for connecting dots others don\'t see: how technical architecture shapes team structure and health; how communication patterns impact product velocity; how design systems become organizational operating systems. I enjoy story-sharing and continuous learning. Here\'s a few I regularly find myself sharing— The one where I scaled a accommodation partner platform from 1→14 teams, 10→85+ people, and 500k→1.5M daily active users for Booking.com— The one where I designed a 0→1 operational planning product delivery system as part of an end-to-end workflow modernization project for the United States\' Space Force— The two when I was named a peer-nominated Playmaker, given to 0.15% of the global workforce, for consistent behaviors & systemic impact around diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging. I\'m seeking a Director or Leadership role at organizations building products on the web platform. I\'m specifically interested in companies that are working in the Open Source, Climate & Sustainability, People & Culture, Travel, Civic Tech, or Creative Tooling spaces.I thrive in cultures that value continuous learning, feedback, co-creative remote/hybrid environments—grounded in equity, transparency, and inclusive decision-making. I want to help build products and organizations for the next century, not just the next funding round. If it’s near Barcelona or Amsterdam, all the better.Visit my website at https://jonathanstephens.us.Read my newsletter at https://craftandpractice.com.View my resume: https://jonathanstephens.us/resume.Book an engagement with https://poetandscribe.com.

Experience

1. Product Design Consultant

   Strategi Consulting, Llc

   Oct 2024 — Present · US

   Principal product designer for a 0 → 1 workflow modernization application for the United States’ Space Force’s TacSRT cell—from concept to production deployment in under one year.• Architected complex data workflows and system logic, designing a 7-stage operational process (Query → Close Out) with 35-45 unique pages accommodating non-linear, multi-role-dependent progression patterns.• Owned end-to-end content design — spanning microcopy, notification systems (43 types across email and chat), data grids, and email templates — while establishing terminology standards and advocating for operator-centered decisions under development constraints.• Delivered complete brand identity system in eight weeks including logomarks, comprehensive brand book with light/dark mode variants, three typographic scales, packaged implementation assets, and quality assurance during implementation collaboration.• Achieved Section 508 compliance for government deployment implementing semantic HTML structure, ARIA roles/labels, keyboard focus order, and screen reader announcement sequences across all interface components.• Developed component library for complex operational workflows designing approval drawers, comment systems, notification popovers, activity feeds, data upload dialogs, transfer lists, status chips, and document viewers with complete state coverage• Created single source of truth serving 10+ person team through 40-page wiki documenting product specifications (Roles & Permissions, Navigation, Data Grids, Forms, Notifications, Document Reader, Mission Management), reducing onboarding time and eliminating repeated questions• Produced marketing and presentation materials creating 12 process diagram variations (SVG exports), half-sheet expo materials with QR codes, presentation templates, and data visualizations (Gantt charts, distribution bars, progress indicators)

Education

• North Carolina State University

  Bachelor of Graphic Design, Graphic Design

Skills

• Video Editing
• User Experience
• Graphics
• Interaction Design
• Design Strategy
• Photography
• Layout
• Photoshop
• Web Design
• Animation
• Illustrator
• Cascading Style Sheets (Css)
• Graphic Design
• Flash
• Adobe Photoshop
• Html
• Adobe Illustrator
• Typography
• Wordpress
• Motion Design
• Illustration
• Css