Hej there! 👋🏻
I'm Madlen
I lead design teams through complex, high-stakes problems - and I still do the work.
Team builder
I've built, scaled, and managed design teams of 15+ across multiple product lines. I hire well, I create space for people to do their best thinking, and I care as much about their growth as I do about what we ship.
p.s. This is my attempt at channelling Maira Kalman - one of my favourite illustrators of all time. Drawing used to be my meditation; these days I get high discovering new artists, reading The New Yorker, and defending my Wordle streak as a lifelong NYT subscriber.
Systems thinker
I specialise in the kind of work where complexity is real - operational tooling, decision-support dashboards, multi-user systems where bad UX has consequences far beyond a bad review. I make that complexity navigable.
Track record
6 years at Ocado Technology leading design across warehouse automation and fulfilment - consolidating 67 management reports into 12, building the UX end-to-end for a new store-based automation programme, and driving AI adoption across design and product teams.
C-suite to warehouse floor. I've sat in strategy sessions with global retail partners and stood on warehouse floors in the US and Australia watching operatives use our software under real pressure. That range is where I'm most useful.
15+ years in design. From graphic design before UX was a discipline, through interaction and service design, into leadership. Every step taught me something I use today.
Hands-on leader
I care about the people I work with - their growth, their wellbeing, and whether they're doing work they're proud of. That's not something I say in a 1:1 kickoff and forget about. It's how I actually try to show up.
Leadership principles
You'll never have to guess where you stand. I give feedback when it's relevant, not when HR schedules it.
I trust your judgment. You don't need my sign-off to move. I'm here when you want a sounding board, not a gatekeeper.
Try things. Go further than feels safe. I worry a lot more about teams that stop exploring than teams that take swings and miss.
Your life outside work is not secondary. If something needs your attention - take it. No explanation needed.
When the team wins, the team wins. When something goes wrong, I'm the one who stands up and owns it.
The best version of this job, for me, is watching someone I've worked with go on to do things I couldn't have done. That's the whole point.
Skills
Craft Skills
Service design · End-to-end UX · User research · Prototyping · Design systems · Workshop facilitation · Visual design & typography
UX & UI Design
Enterprise B2B SaaS · Operational tooling · Data-heavy dashboards · Decision-support interfaces · Complex multi-user workflows · Management systems
Leadership & Management
Team building & hiring · Mentoring · UX strategy · Cross-functional leadership · Stakeholder management · C-suite partnering · AI adoption & team enablement
Soft Skills
Systems thinking · Comfort with ambiguity · Translating business complexity into design direction · Operating at every altitude - from vision to execution · Always closest to the problem
Outside work
In my early teenage years, I was part of two-people team behind Groove Manifesto - one of Bulgaria's first design and visual culture e-zines (and it is still online for the generations!). It ran for about twelve years. That's probably where all of this started. These days: tennis. Music curation taken suspiciously seriously and with a very suspicious taste. Croissants research in every city I visit. Grocery stores too - don't knock it until you've spent twenty minutes in a Seoul convenience store at midnight.