GFL is the fourth largest diversified environmental services company in North America, with 15,000+ employees across Canada and the US. I joined in 2023 as its first product designer and built the design function from scratch, growing it into a three-person team. I then moved to the industrial services division as the only designer, working directly with product managers and developers on data-heavy platforms and tools used on plant floors.
· 11 products shipped across both divisions
· Design system used by 8 teams
The Evolution of Design Maturity
Foundations
2023 - 2024
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Shipped GFL's first customer portal on its first design system, adapted from Material Design 3.
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Learned the operations before designing: [N] interviews and site visits with [teams].
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Mentored a junior designer through her first months.
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By the end of the year, user testing had a place in the product roadmap. [Confirma que esto es cierto.]
1
Scaling Team & Process Optimization
2024 - 2025
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Hired a mid-level designer and led design delivery across seven enterprise projects in parallel.
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Set up a shared design process: agile sprint cadences, weekly alignment meetings to resolve common friction points, and a standardized handoff pipeline that kept design ahead of engineering sprints.
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Brought generative AI into the team's workflow: introduced UX Pilot for early structural concepts and, after the company's move to Google, set up Gemini as the team's standard for refining UX copy.
2
A New Division, Rebuilt Around AI
2025 - 2026
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Moved to the industrial services division as the only designer, working directly with product managers and developers on four complex, data-heavy projects at once.
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Because the users were GFL employees, I could interview them and gather feedback directly, and made that practice standard with every product manager in the division.
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Ran warehouse site visits and used Microsoft Clarity heatmaps and session replays to shape layouts for fast, error-free data entry.
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Built an independent design system on Shadcn UI for dense dashboards, complex tables and numeric inputs.
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When the engineering team moved to Claude, I requested a license so design could stay compatible with how they build. Today I prototype and keep the design system's logic and documentation in Claude Design, alongside product managers and developers.
3
Senior Practice & AI Workflow
Discovery
Gemini (Gems), Spreadsheets, User Interviews
Interviews, site visits and document analysis first. I use AI to synthesize large volumes of feedback, then validate the patterns with real users.
Prototype
Claude, Figma Make, Figma, Google Stitch, UX Pilot
In Claude Design, I build interactive prototypes alongside product managers while user stories are written, so the team reacts to something real on day one.
Specify
Claude Design, Figjam, Notion, Spreadsheets
Every design ships with edge cases, component states, validation rules and developer notes.
Validate
User Workshops, Site Visits, MS Clarity
Workshops, site visits and usage analytics, so we can see whether error rates actually go down.
GFL Projects
Pharma & Narcotics Waste System
Transforming a fragmented legacy application into a compliant, data-driven platform for high-risk pharmaceutical logistics
Waste management EPR Ecosystem
A unified enterprise platform automating nationwide environmental compliance across Canada.
Accounts Receivable ecosystem
Replacing a Legacy AR (Accounts Receivable) Ecosystem in 10 months
Waste management Customer Portal
Transforming a legacy ecosystem into a scalable, data-driven platform.