HL
Leading a Global Presentation Design Team in a High-Pressure Financial Environment
I now run the LA office presentation design team in a global investment banking environment, overseeing quality, mentoring creatives, and implementing workflow improvements that help the team deliver high-volume, deadline-driven client presentations without letting standards slip.
- Role
- Design Manager
- Type
- Design leadership, creative operations, presentation systems
Many of the projects I lead are confidential and cannot be shown publicly. This case study focuses on leadership, process, tools, and representative public work.
The Situation
At HL, the presentations team supports bankers with highly confidential materials used in mergers and acquisitions, fundraising, and strategic communications. The work moves quickly, changes often, and requires polished client-ready execution.
My Role
As Design Manager, I now run the LA office presentation design team, after growing from leading the night team into a broader office-wide leadership role. I own the creative and operational health of designers and specialists across multiple regions, set quality standards, direct creative decisions, mentor designers across experience levels from junior to senior, and work closely with a Project Coordinator to manage intake, prioritization, and throughput across 200-400 requests per month.
The Challenge
The environment is high-stakes and unforgiving: confidential financial materials for investment banking clients, delivered under constant deadline pressure with minimal room for error. The challenge is not just volume. It is maintaining creative consistency, clear communication across regions, and individual designer growth simultaneously, without sacrificing output quality.
My Approach
I treat operational infrastructure as a creative investment. Instead of managing reactively, I build the systems that give the team clarity and confidence, then use that stability to push people creatively. That means custom internal tools to reduce repetitive work, clear onboarding and review structures, hands-on quality review paired with coaching, and cross-regional communication tight enough that context carries through handoff.
Key Initiatives
Creative standards and coaching, PNGMapper, Visual Tracker, onboarding and training materials, review structures, and cross-shift communication protocols all support the same goal: protect quality while making high-volume work more sustainable.
Results
Over nearly five years my scope grew from leading the night team to running the entire LA office. The team absorbs 200 to 400 confidential, deadline-driven requests a month across regions without letting quality slip. PNGMapper turned 1,000-plus point map jobs from hours of manual work into minutes.