Leading v1-v22 of Modular Hair:

Context: The Modular Hair project was an initiative approved with multiple goals in mind, with no clear timeline planned. I lead the initial two milestones for developing the core technology, presenting its usecase to leadership and the ML engineers.

Role: Project STO, accountable for milestone development and completion within a 6 person team, presenting project progress to leadership, and ensuring maintenance of documentation.

What I did:

• Stakeholder analysis for the project to ensure teammates and relevant leadership were clear on the project goals and deliverables
• Outlined project tasking, timeline, and risks, as well as defining risk-management plans
• Clarified responsibilities per team member using the RACI framework
• Lead bi-weekly morning stand-ups, async check-ins, and retrospectives
• Populated and tracked progress on Jira, providing weekly updates to leadership

Outcome: Both Milestones were completed on time prior to the work being transferred under the ML R&D team; my tracking and documentation were used as guidelines for further milestones in that process.

Onboarding & knowledge sharing:

Context: With the pace of a start-up, many teammembers didn't have capacity for thorough documentation; this made onboarding and knowledge sharing difficult.

Role: Organized and lead documentation & porocess evaluations, coordinated team needs and tasking with management

What I did:

• Standardized team-wide technical and production documentation by creating leadership-approved documentation templates
• Defined roles and documentation expectations
• Leveraged AI to set up automated documentation workflow
• Broke work up into tasks (documentation review, writing onboarding documentation, depricating old information), assigning and monitoring task progression across 21 team-members on Jira

Outcome: Improved documentation quality & consistency, as well as clarity around project alignment with company-wide OKRs. The process additionally increased team confidence in their understanding of company processes, improving cross-functional collaboration, and strengthening team positivity and bond.

Shipping avatar features across teams:

Context: Scoped support for new avatar types in Unity so they could be used across products on a tight deadline.

Role: Drove scoping sessions, captured decisions, and owned action items across Avatar Tech, backend, and product teams.

What I did:

• Broke work into milestones (framework, content management, editor updates)
• Clarified responsibilities per team
• Identified external dependencies and open questions

Outcome: Clear epic/task breakdown and documented path to a March/February ship window for multiple surfaces.

Managed first ever Tech Art intern:
Context: As the team grew, in the Spring of 2024, I proposed developing our first ever intern program.

Role: Managed the hiring and work of technical art intern.

What I did:

• Prior to hiring - developed a proposal, including defining out the role, expressing how they could benefit Genies as a business, and reviewing and interviewing candidates.
• After hiring: outlined intern work and responsibilities, facilitated meetings to streamline their onboarding and training, held weekly 1-on-1's, tracked progress, and kept ongoing review over our intern program for the future.

Outcome: The intern hired back for an additional 4 months after their summer internship, and the following year we were able to get budget for 6 additional interns for the team.

Scoping a new emote generation service:

Context: New pipeline turning creator videos into in‑app animations using external services plus internal tools.

Role: Coordinated stakeholders (XR, ARF, product, engineering), captured current state, and documented action items and long‑term considerations.

What I did: Clarified MVP vs long‑term architecture, documented cost/scale concerns, and ensured ownership (boards, ERD, design updates) was assigned.

Outcome: Shared understanding of MVP workflow and a documented path toward a platform‑independent, scalable solution.

Communicating technical features to non‑technical teams:

Context: Shader R&D for user‑generated makeup options on avatars.

Role: Helped frame shader capabilities in terms that designers and non‑technical collaborators could use.

What I did: Documented features, editable parameters, and usage patterns (masks, patterns, materials) as simple sections: what it is, what you can change, what it’s good for.

Outcome: Documented features, editable parameters, and usage patterns (masks, patterns, materials) as simple sections: what it is, what you can change, what it’s good for.