Hello, I’m Fred. I’m a creative director and design leader based in New York City.
Over the past twenty years, I’ve worked across financial journalism, media, advertising, retail, and digital products. My career has taken me from traditional creative direction to the CNBC newsroom and, later, deep into product and customer experience. That range has shaped how I think about ideas, audiences, and the role design plays in connecting the two.
At CNBC, I built and led a multidisciplinary design team that helped shape the digital expression of one of the world’s leading financial news brands. We worked alongside writers, editors, producers, photographers, and technologists across breaking news, visual storytelling, brand, and emerging platforms. It remains one of the most formative chapters of my career.
Since then, my work has expanded into personalization, subscriptions, innovation, accessibility, design systems, and AI. The technology keeps changing, but the challenge is remarkably consistent: understand what someone is trying to communicate, find the clearest and most compelling way to express it, and make it meaningful to the audience.
I care deeply about craft. Typography matters. Photography matters. Words matter. So do hierarchy, pacing, interaction, and the details that make an experience feel considered.
“The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you're trying to design for. Leadership is exactly the same thing - building empathy for the people that you're entrusted to help.”
— DAVID M. KELLY
FOUNDER OF IDEO
I also believe good creative work is collaborative. I value process, but experience, judgment, curiosity, and listening matter just as much. Some of the best work happens when talented people challenge one another, build on an idea, and make something better together.
I’ve built and led teams throughout my career, and some of the work I’m proudest of is watching talented people grow in confidence, judgment, and craft. Leadership, to me, is about setting a high bar while creating the trust and space for people to do their best work.
Outside of my professional work, photography has remained an important part of my creative life. It keeps me looking closely, noticing details, and making images simply because I want to make them.
After more than two decades in design, that desire to make things is still what drives me: ideas, images, stories, technology, talented people, and the chance to create something meaningful together.
