Michelle Kwon
Senior Brand Designer

Hey there, I'm Michelle!

Senior Brand Designer

I’m a multi-faceted designer in San Francisco with a passion for the arts and mental health. Every 5-10 years, with major external shifts happening in the world, our frameworks of life tend to be shaken, re-evaluated, and reimagined. I believe an impactful designer evolves with those changes, staying attuned to both the subtle details and large-scale transformations.

With 2 years in digital marketing and 5 years in design, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with a vast array of clientele from larger corporations like Salesforce to high-growth startups like Modern Health and Indiegogo to non-profit organizations like United Nations’ Girl Up. My exposure has made me a leader in the design world, as I’ve spearheaded brand refreshes, built design teams, and developed design processes for companies.

My ability to deftly communicate and collaborate with stakeholders and team members has effectively moved my designs forward, allowing clients and companies to advance in their goals. On a soft-skills tier, I bring energy, positivity, thoughtfulness, and deep empathy to a team.

 

Work

 

Testimonials

  • Michelle is a phenomenal brand strategist specializing in visuals and has been integral in evolving the Modern Health brand. She is highly collaborative, works tirelessly with partners to enhance the work, and delivers on time. Michelle led the company rebrand, established a new look and feel, and made our designs look elevated and fresh. She also developed multiple concepts to add to our brand guidelines ensuring differentiation from our competitors.

    In addition to design skills, Michelle is also a strong manager of creative operations. She led a team of designers and web developers, using effective communication and project management skills, to ensure the team delivers the highest quality work and meets deadlines.

    Michelle also goes above and beyond in her daily responsibilities. She dedicated her own time outside work hours to build the API employee resource group, including developing the inaugural logo along with other creative assets that captures the stories for the API community. Michelle is an all around superstar and I’ve been so lucky to have worked with her!

  • Michelle is a creative force. Not only does she have exceptional raw talent, but excellent communication style, keen judgment and positive, collaborative attitude. She creates beautiful experiences, has a "can do" attitude when working with thought partners internally. I appreciate Michelle's ability to prioritize and stand by her work when she believes in something. Michelle is confident in her approach and that approach is always spot-on. She really understands people and that is reflected in her work. Michelle is one of those team players that makes everyone around her perform their best - she's supportive, encouraging, and her impact extends well beyond design output. She takes on projects with a smile, and genuinely seems grateful for the opportunity. I love seeing Michelle take on a leadership role - whether it be presenting new brand concepts or overseeing a team of designers. She has great vision, and I greatly value her opinion. Michelle is a treasure to any team, and I can't recommend her highly enough.

  • Michelle was a joy to have on my team at Indiegogo. She's sharp, constructive, and skilled both as a designer and a collaborator. She dove head-first into every project, often working independently with cross-functional stakeholders to find the right design solution for the problem at hand. And her impact was larger than just the many designs she shipped -- she was also a great source of energy and inspiration on the team. I hope our professional paths cross again!

  • When Michelle joined my team, first as a summer intern and then a full-time hire, I knew we had someone special. At that early stage in her career, Michelle approached projects and tasks with a rare combination of diligence, urgency, a willingness and desire to understand both the why and the how, and the determination to deliver results. Michelle's attention to detail, project management, and execution are excellent and continue to be a strong foundation for growing her career and skills.

    Michelle's early projects included participating in the planning of our annual customer conference as well as conducting research on competitor positioning and messaging to present to our CMO.

    As Michelle continued her career with LiveAction she took on roles of webinar management, events management and coordination, and vendor management. Michelle's responsibilities were expanded to own and execute our presence at shows such as: RSA 2017, Cisco Live EMEA 2017, a 50-city joint road show with Cisco, the 25-city season of Cisco Connects, and a series of CIO Lunch & Learns. To accomplish all of these, Michelle's diligence and attention to detail were critical.

    When we saw a clear gift for project management in her skill-set, Michelle was designated the central point of contact and coordination on two critical projects. First, the integration of the marketing functions of an acquired company. Michelle was instrumental in ensuring the smooth scheduling, communication, and task completion of integrating the two functions into one. Secondly, Michelle took on the role of managing our drive to obtain customer success stories. This project again relied on Michelle's consistent (and persistent) communication skills. Success in this project meant Michelle had to chase down extremely busy and otherwise occupied executives, get a firm commitment to an interview time, and ensure the PR and Product team members were all available to make the best use of that time.

    Along with these projects, Michelle continued her pursuit of understanding the mechanics of how things get done in a Marketing department. Michelle's desire to learn led her into areas such as Marketing Automation, Email development and execution, Social Meda, Graphic Design, Booth Design, and many others.

    If the story of this recommendation ended here, it would be easy for me to close by saying that Michelle is on a path to having an accomplished career in whichever area she pursues, and it will be my pleasure to see how that unfolds, but there's more...

    Michelle balances her ferocious desire to learn, to grow, and to understand with a supportive and generous attitude to everyone around her. As a team member she has no equal, as a friend she is indispensable, and as an employee she has no limits. The combined qualities of emotional intelligence and her inquisitive drive promise to be a solid foundation from which I believe Michelle will continue to grow into the well-rounded, grounded, and mature contributor.

  • I worked with Michelle for 2 years at LiveAction. She is an extremely intelligent, hardworking and super creative person. I tasked her with numerous projects that were initially internally and externally visible and they were completed on time and exceeded my expectations. She is an amazing designer and I highly recommend that if you have the opportunity to work with her, you should take it.

  • Michelle embodies many leadership qualities, but the three I'd like to highlight are her intellectual curiosity, creativity, and humility. This was a new product for Michelle, and her curiosity allowed her to ask the right questions and dig deep to truly understand our user's needs and experiences. It was equally impressive how her curiosity and creativity assisted her in building out the core Ascend experiences (home page, portal, etc.) with the customer in mind. This was especially challenging due to the amount of information we have to present and our mobile-first approach, but Michelle excelled with many unique solutions. Maybe most impressive about Michelle are her humility and desire for self improvement. As a UI/UX designer at Ascend (the startup), Michelle wore a lot of hats and excelled at each of the things she worked on, always asking for and being receptive to feedback along the way. I would highly recommend Michelle for any type of UI/UX designer role.

  • Michelle is an incredibly talented designer and an absolute joy to work with. Modern Health grew from a scrappy startup into a mature company selling to F500s with a more established and clinical brand during Michelle's tenure. She was instrumental in guiding the evolution of our visual brand alongside the company. Michelle works by seamlessly moving between detail and vision. Her organization and leadership helped our design team scale its output as the company grew.

    On a personal note, Michelle lights up rooms (or Zooms) with her personality. She has an incredible sense of humor, is deeply empathetic, and did so much for our company culture, including co-founding and co-leading our ERG for employees who identify with Asian or Pacific Islander heritage.

  • I highly recommend Michelle as a Brand Design Leader to any organization. Her empathetic leadership, creativity, and quality of work are second-to-none. As the first design hire, she effectively scaled, trained, and mentored a team of designers and implemented processes to streamline collaboration amongst marketing and stakeholders. As a product marketer, I worked with Michelle and her team on numerous projects from slides, one-pagers, and social graphics to white papers, research reports, and other marketing assets -- all of which felt like a very efficient, seamless process. Undoubtedly, she elevates the design standard through her projects and would be an invaluable asset to any organization looking to grow or kickstart their Design function.

    Besides her design prowess, Michelle helps foster a positive work culture. Together, we founded the first Asian ERG at Modern Health, grew the group to over 60 employees, and hosted over 15 events that promoted inclusion and belonging within the organization.

  • I can't say enough about how amazing Michelle is as a designer, manager, a strategic thinker, and a deeply empathetic human with high integrity. She is truly a gem! Her dedication, leadership, and commitment to brand excellence was vital to the success of Modern Health’s brand development and later refresh. Michelle’s consistent leadership created a synergy for seamless collaboration between internal teams and stakeholders. During our 12+ months together (me being a Modern Health contract designer), Michelle mentored me in focusing on organizational goals, clearly outlining expectations, all while helping me develop and improve my skills and processes. Michelle was always willing to make time for my questions and requests for assistance, no matter how little (or big) or repetitive, in which I am so thankful. As my supervisor, it has been an honor and joy to have gotten to know Michelle, professionally and personally. She has made such a positive impact on my professional life, and I am better for it! Michelle will be a priceless asset to any organization she is a part of.

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