Strategy · Design · Delivery

Designing and shipping new products in complex, regulated environments

Design leader with 12+ years making complex systems feel simple. I shape strategy, do the hands-on work, and build the frameworks and standards that help organizations ship better, faster.

Capital One Salesforce Lyra Health athenahealth

Impact areas

01

AI product strategy

Helping organizations design AI-powered experiences people trust — especially in regulated environments where the margin for error is small.

02

Design foundations & governance

Building the frameworks, standards, and cross-functional alignment that let teams ship AI experiences responsibly and at scale.

03

0-to-1 product design

Taking ambiguous problem spaces and turning them into shipped products — from research and strategy through prototyping and launch.

04

Team building & mentorship

Scaling design teams from zero and developing designers at every level through honest mentorship and collaborative environments.

Case studies

Capital One AI Design
Capital One GenAI Strategy & Governance

Establishing trustworthy AI design at a Fortune 100 bank

Created the AI Design Studio, UX governance program, and cross-functional alignment model for responsible generative AI experiences in regulated finance.

Sr. Manager, Gen AI Experiences
Confidential
Salesforce AI Prospecting
Salesforce GenAI 0-to-1

Reimagining B2B prospecting with AI

Led strategy and design for an AI-powered prospecting tool from concept pitch to Dreamforce announcement in under a year.

UX Lead & Principal Strategist
Salesforce Sales Enablement
Salesforce 0-to-1 Acquisition

From whitespace to platform: building sales enablement

Led the research and strategy that identified a whitespace opportunity, informed an acquisition, and shipped a new product that grew to 94 enterprise customers.

Principal Designer & Strategist → Design Manager
Salesforce GenAI
Salesforce GenAI Org Design

Designing enterprise-ready GenAI for CRM

Organized a cross-cloud collaboration that built Salesforce's first GenAI experience framework and influenced the creation of Einstein Copilot.

Design Manager & Lead Strategist
Lyra Health
Lyra Health HealthTech 0-to-1

Building a mental health marketplace from the ground up

Joined as sole designer at Series B, solved a core trust problem, built the design function, and laid foundations for a $4.5B category leader.

Founding Designer → Design Manager
Epocrates Provider Directory
Epocrates / athenahealth HealthTech User research

Redesigning clinical search for healthcare providers

Led user research that reframed a low-engagement provider directory into a smart referral tool — uncovering how physicians actually make referral decisions.

Senior UX Designer

A bit about me

Paula Rigoli

I'm a strategist and design leader with a passion for asking the right questions — the ones that uncover what users actually need, not just what stakeholders assume. I care deeply about human-centered design, building trustworthy experiences, and making sure the customer's perspective is at the center of every product decision.

I bring fluency between hands-on design and strategic leadership. I'm at my best when standing up something new — whether that's embedding with a team to ship a product, or helping an organization build the design strategy and infrastructure to do it themselves.

View resume
Education
MIT
Designing and Building AI Products and Services
UNC Chapel Hill
MS, Human-Computer Interaction
Brigham Young University
BA, Comparative Literature
GenAI Design UX Strategy Design Systems Regulated Industries Enterprise SaaS Healthcare 0-to-1

Interested in working together?

I'm open to design leadership roles, strategic consulting, and collaborations — especially in AI, fintech, and healthcare.