Design leadership for founders building products people trust.
For Seed to Series B founders shipping AI and D2C products where trust is the product. I turn early ambiguity into clear design direction, so your team ships with conviction and your next round sees the signal.
Founders tell me the same things, almost word for word.
“Our product works, but it doesn't feel trustworthy yet.”
Series A founder, AI product“We're raising, and the demo has to land.”
Seed founder, prepping Series A“We have designers, but no one senior steering them.”
Head of Product, Series B“We can't justify a full time VP of Design yet.”
Cofounder, 20 person team
Three named ways to work together. Pick the one that fits where you are.
Design Advisory
On call senior judgment when the stakes are high.
A few hours a month. Product and design reviews, hiring calls, roadmap gut checks, and a sounding board for the decisions that keep you up at night.
Fractional Design Leadership
I run your design function, part time and embedded.
For teams that need real leadership before the full time hire. I own craft quality, hiring, systems, and roadmap partnership with product and engineering.
Design Audit Or Sprint
A low commitment way to try working together.
A focused, one time engagement. A senior audit of your product and design org, or a short sprint on the surface that matters most right now.
A design leadership framework for complex, AI-powered products.
Understand the real problems, users, and opportunities.
Claude agents + Hey Marvin MCP for research synthesis and user testing for videos
Bring stakeholders together around clarity and goals.
FigJam, exec narratives, prioritization frameworks
Create intelligent solutions that are human-centered.
Collaborate closely with engineering and data teams.
GitHub handoff, eng forks with live data and LLM
Learn, iterate, and drive measurable business impact.
Production analytics, loop back
What leaders say
Hover or scroll to browse. Full LinkedIn recommendations available upon request.
“Ashwarya is a design leader who operates like a business strategist. She has technical depth and the instincts you rarely find outside the executive level. Her standout strength is data fluency, she reads data in a way few people can, finding the nuance everyone else misses and turning it into value for the business and the user. One example: a set of results came back that looked clean. Ashwarya thought something was off. Unprompted, she sat with analytics for days, used Fullstory to study actual user behavior, and unlocked major performance gains. No one asked her to. That's how she operates.”
“Ash is a one of a kind design leader, thoughtful, strategic, intuitive, and thorough. She advocates for her team with deep consideration and leans into the hardest challenges. Shortly after joining, she championed what became the Insurance Marketplace v2, bringing it to leadership with conviction, mapping it tightly to our strategic narrative, and grounding it in years of consumer research.”
“I had the opportunity to collaborate with Ash on several innovative high-impact design projects at LendingClub. Her fresh, modern perspective on UX coupled with her ability to code makes her an invaluable team member. Mix in her tenacity to not give up on ambitious ideas makes Ash a complete joy to work with.”
What leaders say
Keep scrolling. Full LinkedIn recommendations available upon request.
“Ashwarya is a design leader who operates like a business strategist. She has technical depth and the instincts you rarely find outside the executive level. Her standout strength is data fluency, she reads data in a way few people can, finding the nuance everyone else misses and turning it into value for the business and the user. One example: a set of results came back that looked clean. Ashwarya thought something was off. Unprompted, she sat with analytics for days, used Fullstory to study actual user behavior, and unlocked major performance gains. No one asked her to. That's how she operates.”
“Ash is a one of a kind design leader, thoughtful, strategic, intuitive, and thorough. She advocates for her team with deep consideration and leans into the hardest challenges. Shortly after joining, she championed what became the Insurance Marketplace v2, bringing it to leadership with conviction, mapping it tightly to our strategic narrative, and grounding it in years of consumer research.”
“I hired Ash fresh out of college. She delivered on her various assignments and spent her own time to learn the latest frontend technologies. I wholeheartedly recommend Ash as a great team player and strong performer on any UX team.”
“I had the opportunity to collaborate with Ash on several innovative high-impact design projects at LendingClub. Her fresh, modern perspective on UX coupled with her ability to code makes her an invaluable team member. Mix in her tenacity to not give up on ambitious ideas makes Ash a complete joy to work with.”
Tell me about your team, and where design can move you faster.
Reply within 48 hours. First conversation is a 30 minute intro call, no pitch, to understand what you're building and whether fractional makes sense.