About

I design on Yext's Data Syndication team.
I raise a kid in Ann Arbor.
I run a homelab from the basement.

Twelve years in B2B SaaS. I'm a Lead Product Designer on Yext Data Syndication, the platform that pushes business data to the publishers customers actually search on. I'm the most-tenured designer on a six-person team. Before that, I led design on Yext Relate, led design at Singlecomm, and shipped front-end code for early-stage startups.

email

Rod, '25

Professional

Earlier at Yext, I led design on Relate (formerly Hearsay), the messaging platform financial advisors use to talk to clients without breaking SEC and FINRA rules. I worked across product, engineering, and compliance to ship features that moved quickly without losing the audit trail regulators require.

Before Yext, I led design at Singlecomm. I designed Workflow, a no-code script builder that cut call-center deployment from 8 weeks to 3 days and saved Beachbody over $100K a year.

I started as a front-end developer in 2008, building MVPs for early-stage startups. That bench is why I still ship coded prototypes when a flow needs to be felt, not just shown.

Seattle, '23

Design team, '19

Mid-year, '22

Personal

I live in Ann Arbor with my wife and son. Days run on play gyms 🛝, dance parties to "Zoom Zoom Zoom, We're Going to the Moon" 🧑🏾‍🚀🌚, family gatherings, and an ongoing search for a great pizza spot 🍕.

Spare time is split between smart home tinkering 🏠 and the home lab rack 👨🏾‍💻. I fall down YouTube rabbit holes for fun 📺, and I'm a lifelong movie buff; my collection runs past 3,500 films 🍿.

Homelab

Theater

How I started

The first computer I ever used was my grandmother's Windows 95 desktop, which I was forbidden to touch. Eventually I wore her down. That got me my first PC, a Hewlett-Packard running Windows 98, and a curiosity about how things work that I never grew out of.

I built sites on Geocities and customized MySpace pages, then moved to FrontPage, Dreamweaver, and hand-rolled CSS as the modern web-standards era took shape.

Freelance work eventually became my first real job in 2008, as a front-end developer. I drifted toward product and UX from there, and have been shipping software for a living ever since.

Like what you see? Let's talk.

I design on Yext's Data Syndication team.I raise a kid in Ann Arbor.I run a homelab from the basement.

Professional

Personal

How I started

hello@rod.me

I design on Yext's Data Syndication team.
I raise a kid in Ann Arbor.
I run a homelab from the basement.