Human-centered design leader with 15+ years of experience driving research-led strategy and high-impact design across products and services, in startups, organizations, and academia
An expert in translating user needs and business goals to compelling design solutions within tight constraints, while enabling measurable design outcomes at scale across departments
Proven impact on large portfolios, millions of users, and optimizing processes with ai, while using effective storytelling skills for executive influence
Expertise & Impact Areas
UX Research & Market Research
Design Strategy
Product & Service Design
CX Strategy
AI‑driven Product Design
Helping clients found, launch, and lead their companies and products with stellar designs that instill confidence in their customers to engage and adopt their compelling services
Drive brand success and reduce risk by aligning design and customer value with their measurable business goals, clarifying their differentiators and niche position in the market, while building their product and brand designs, along with strategic roadmaps and pitch decks for growth.
Activities:
Leading end‑to‑end design strategy engagements across brands, products (UX/UI), and customer experience for startups and organizations.
Advising clients on AI‑driven design opportunities, including AI agents and features for optimization, automation, and insight generation.
Delivering executive‑level strategy decks & actionable roadmaps aligning design to business goals.
Adjunct Professor
Parsons School of Design, The New School
New York | 01.2024 – Present | 08.2016-05.2017 (3 years)
Impact: Enabled the graduation of 50+ highly-talented Design Strategists with portfolio-ready projects ready to be employed in various Creative Strategy and Design roles, and helped Parsons remain a pioneer in the design field in this day and age, by providing a top-level effective education on innovation frameworks
Activities:
Taught Design Thinking, Research Methods, and Capstone courses to 90+ undergraduate students in 2:30 hour weekly classes
Guided students from discovery to validation, emphasizing experimentation, storytelling, and impact in the UCD process
Developed multi‑modal curricula combining lectures, workshops, case studies, speaker lectures, videos, and applied methods in individual and group projects
Senior CX Strategist
MetLife
New York | 02.2025 – 10.2025 (9 months)
Impact:
Supported the marketing team by spearheading CX initiatives for multi‑$BN retirement products across B2B insurance and investment offerings, by owning CX roadmaps, briefs, and initiatives.
Increased levels of innovation and focus around high-impact user problems that provided a clear roadmap for every quarter, by implementing a strategic approach to increasing CX maturity at the company, enabling consistent tapping into user pain points and jobs to be done
Activities:
Designed and launched a large Voice‑of‑Customer (VoC) program strategy for end‑to‑end journeys, integrating Medallia on 5 platforms with clear business KPIs
Led UX redesigns of digital platforms, improving funnel CTR, conversion, and retention rates
stakeholder alignment across research, design, and content
Facilitated conversations to ideate around journeys and personas of financial advisors and brokers
Ideation / Prioritization Matrix
User Research (Discovery and Evaluation / Qual and Quant)
Data Analysis & Synthesis
User Interviews & Usability Testing
QA testing
Personas & User Journeys
Epics & User Stories
User Flows & Site Maps
Brands / Visuals:
Brand Design and Visual Identity
Market Research
Competitive Analysis
Business Models
Product Pitch Decks
Visual Storytelling
Communication Design
Extra-Curricular Activities
Culture-Building:
Spearheaded a culture-building initiative at McKinsey for learning and growth across departments
Guided and led a weekly meditation program for 3+ years
Volunteer Work:
Hunger Relief
Design Thinking Bootcamps
Special Needs Athletes
Yoga Organization Staff
Park Cultivation Work
Passion & Interests:
Yoga
Meditation
Gardening
Swimming
Product Designer (UX)
Intuit Mailchimp
New York / Remote | 05.2023 – 05.2024 (1 year)
Impact:
New York, NY Limassol.Zok@gmail.com www.limassolzok.com www.linkedin.com/in/LimassolZok +1 (929) 563‑8032
Optimized the usability and information architecture of the Audience section and improved discoverability of information and just-in-time messaging for ~30M users
Reduced blockers by introducing a new error-handling feature for efficient & confident importing
Enabled the prioritization of high-impact, low-effort releases while improving UX maturity as whole
Activities:
Redesigned the information architecture, navigation, components, and page layouts of multiple Audience pages, to reduce friction and prioritize high-value CTAs, based on user research findings
Created and tested high-fidelity prototypes, conducted a competitive UX audit, analyzed user data, facilitated ideation workshops, and ran A/B usability tests on multiple user flows
Facilitated multiple conversations with leadership, PMs, and engineers within an agile framework to enable an effective release of new features within tight deadlines
Enabled high-level UX designs within an initiative centered on code migration, including: a refreshed CMS table with optimized filtering and bulk actions, new features in the import flow, and the release of various new pages like the Import History and Settings.
Product Design Lead (UX & Research)
McKinsey & Company
New York | 04.2017 – 04.2023 (6 years)
Impact:
Drove significant gains in recruiting process efficiency through the acquisition and rollout of a note-taking tool, and improved workflows for 100+ recruiters by reducing wasted time and friction
Increased the satisfaction and adoption across ~900 recruiters of the primary ATS (Avature), through research, strategic feature prioritization, and an effective vendor partnership
Established a strong user-research culture and UX mindset on the team, helping everyone focus on prioritizing high-impact problems, while setting realistic and outcome-driven metrics (OKRs)
Activities:
Conducted discovery research and card-sorting exercises, and synthesized insights for leadership, aligning stakeholders through facilitated ideation workshops on high-value problems
Ran a pilot program of a newly acquired tool, achieving ~95% satisfaction amongst users, and designed high-fidelity prototypes of webpages, collaborating with engineering on implementation
Translated survey insights into feature requests and defined a new program for super users
Redesigned pages to align with WCAG standards and vendor best practices
Led bootcamps for internal colleagues, increasing the quality of UX maturity at the company
** Earlier roles included: Graphic Designer, Project Manager, Design Strategist, and Program Leader. Details available upon request. **
Education and Credentials
MS, Strategic Design & Management — Parsons The New School, New York
Graduated with Honors · GPA 4.0 · Startup got incubated · Worked with Program Director
UX Certification — NN/g Nielsen Norman Group
Courses: Mobile UX · Complex Applications · Web UX · Ideation Workshops · UX Metrics
Communication Design Award — Red Dot Design Awards
Communication Design of 2 Annual Reports (Print · Layout · Typography)
