How I lead

“At Intuit, she was a powerhouse of a designer and collaborator, navigating complex product ecosystems with ease. Now, as Head of Design at Qventus, I have seen her excel as an empathetic, visionary leader. She has a remarkable ability to anchor a team, build a highly scalable design infrastructure from the ground up, and translate dense, highly regulated technical data into intuitive, human-centered experiences.”

“Gauri’s thinking is multiple steps ahead of where most people think. She anticipates where the puck will be and doesn’t lock us into where it was. Yet she tempers that against what can be done today.”

“With the various retros and design exercises she’s run, Gauri is always keen to give people on the team the opportunity to participate and feel a part of the process. … I also think it has the benefit of surfacing more diverse perspectives and avoiding the blind spots that can come with more centralized leadership.”

“Of all people, I’ve never had a set of teammates reach out to me more often to share with me how much they enjoy working with a designer and how much they value your collaboration. Kudos!”

“Gauri empowers her designers by trusting their expertise while providing the exact strategic direction needed to align product, engineering, and business goals. Any organization looking for a transformative leader who can elevate both product quality and team culture would be incredibly fortunate to have her.”

“Being part of the core team that somehow convinced Intuit that Contractor Ecosystem was worth pursuing. I can’t overstate how incredible that is. Most projects would have died long ago. Instead, this one is over 50 people strong and with features about to hit the market. … You’ve served as the design lead across this entire project. Other designers are involved, but you set the tone… and that’s a big difference.”

“Gauri is a legend. … She’s an expert design thinker. She can quickly assess an interface problem and pattern-match it across her photographic memory of thousands of interface options, narrowing it down to the few that’ll work.”

“Although she wasn’t my manager, she was senior to me and acted as an amazing mentor. I learned so much from her about how to present designs to different audiences, including C-suite; when to push for more engineering lift versus waiting for post-MVP; how to grow and thrive in my career; and how to bring clarity to complex healthcare workflows, negotiate tradeoffs, and align stakeholder needs.”

“I have had the pleasure of working and learning from Gauri this last year. … Your ability to identify, isolate & communicate large expected shifts in customer behavior is incredible. … You articulate your ideas effectively by using frameworks, and where none exist, you extend them with new ones. Your workshops last year brought forth wonderful provocations, and you put in the energy and hard work to make it successful.”

“It’s second nature to you to take ‘hot off the press’ designs and show them to customers to calibrate on what the best path forward is. … You knew to test a different direction, not just a variation or tweak on the initial direction, but a totally different workflow. That ultimately led to you directly influencing and determining our priority for what to build.”

“Gauri sets the bar for Learn Fast. Very few other designers I work with seek out customer feedback sooner than Gauri. She refuses to back or commit to solutions until a customer has seen it, provided feedback and we’ve had a chance to iterate. I wish I had someone on every project I worked on like her.”

“Her design contributions to Referrals, Sprinter Profile Management, Emails 2.0, Patient Watchlist, Sprinter Organizer Systems, and Supplies Ecosystem have been of very high quality, but she also takes the time to explain ‘why’ the designs are laid out a certain way to engineers. This willingness to explain her designs is what makes Gauri’s impact felt team wide.”

“She has tremendous empathy for our end users which shows in the dedicated and thorough way she approaches her discovery work process. She leaves no stone unturned and makes every member of the team feel as if their feedback is valued.”

“Gauri’s contributions during team critiques have resulted in stronger outcomes for our projects. She provides meaningful feedback, offering different perspectives and challenging designs to identify blind spots and refine our work. Her constructive criticism is always well-received, and she is good at delivering it in a way that motivates her colleagues to do better.”

“Gauri has been an integral part of the team in research and really digging deep into customer problems. Every concept that Gauri presents is always backed by customer verbatim or data. … I love her friendly attitude and how open she is to hearing out ideas from other designers. I love attending her workshops because they are always well thought out and organized.”

“We have launched an incredible amount in the last year and Gauri’s fingerprints are on just about all of it. She has been able to balance innovation with rapid expansion while being grounded and very intentional about how her designs impact all users.”

“Her greatest strength is seamlessly engaging and empowering team members, allowing engineers to co-own designs and contribute ideas. This creates an atmosphere of trust and openness, essential for successful project outcomes.”

“The Sprinter team availability page in particular, was one of the most complex design initiatives within the company to date which she led from the beginning, and was able to handle many types of activities needed in this project ranging from user research, wireframing, prototyping, product and project management. … Her ability to quickly iterate on mocks and prototypes in Figma is absolutely phenomenal!”

“You’ve helped us define a v1 for one of our biggest network effect opportunities in the whole company. And you’ve largely done [it] independently, from the design side. Thank you!”

“Gauri has been the key XD on the Contractor Mission. She was there on Day 1 fighting for the customer experience and has been there every step of the way to our first release making sure we deliver awesome. The Contractor Mission doesn’t happen without her.”

“While working with Gauri on the Zendesk Help Center page, she was well prepared for meetings … and she put forward high-level thinking that had impact on the design and layout of a customer facing program.”

“I’ve had the distinct privilege of working with Gauri across two different chapters of my career, first as close cross-functional collaborators at Intuit, and most recently under her leadership at Qventus. Gauri is the rare design leader who combines elite strategic vision with a profound understanding of foundational craft.”

“For our nascent Design System, Gauri contributed a severity framework with accessible colors, and pressure-tested and adjusted constraints on most Figma components to be sure that they served our startup’s needs. Her contributions sped up the entire organization’s time-to-delivery.”

“It has been an awesome experience to collaborate and partner with Gauri over the past year. She exemplifies all of our Intuit values. … [She] did not hesitate to pull in team members from different triads across the org to get alignment, feedback and guidance. She showed her ability to deliver exceptional results that others could count on.”

“Incredibly passionate about the design process from end to end. … This has led to some very impressive feats of rapid design exploration, testing and execution over matters of days, if not hours. … Ranging from presenting to SVP/EVP level staff, to leading literally perhaps 100 customer sessions, she has been a passionate leader in our group.”

“I worked with Gauri at Sprinter Health, and her contributions without a doubt helped transform the design team and larger org. She advocated for users’ needs relentlessly, always with data at her disposal to justify decisions. She was also never one to shy away from exploring new, innovative directions.”

“I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with Gauri on multiple projects as part of the QB Assistant design team. She’s incredibly professional, organized, and [a] natural leader with a strong foundation in research and customer-backed innovation. … She clearly has a strong handle on research methodology and her expertise was invaluable to the group generating actionable insights.”

“Gauri has taken a humble yet ambitious approach to numerous projects. She works tremendously hard but doesn’t call attention to that fact. This attitude has served as an example for my team which has been very beneficial. … Gauri’s level of organization and thorough communication have drastically improved the outcome of numerous projects we have collaborated on. … When working with her, every voice gets heard and every question gets answered.”

“Gauri champions emerging technologies. For our annual hackathon, she and her engineering partner Nick won People’s Choice. In just 2 days, they enabled our field nurses to focus entirely on the patient by automatically filling out our in-home checklist hands-free.”

“Gauri has been impactful for the team by producing design mocks with quick turnaround in response to feedback. She has been instrumental in helping product map out workflows for Annual Wellness Visits and has rapidly responded to feedback on Sprinter checklist and CMP UI designs to produce low lift designs for the initial launch.”

“I feel your customer-centricity and bias to execute within constraints in the work we’re bringing to market for contractors and employers. Congratulations! This is a massively complicated space and such an incredible zone for us to lean in to: real value to customers, real opportunity for our business.”

“Gauri has a rare talent of being creative and very organized at the same time. Her talent in finding the problem and fixing them in not only the effective way but also concern for environment and people is something every company can use.”

“Do I even need to write this? Gauri is the poster child for Customer Obsession and Speed as a Habit. She will seek customer feedback even when [it’s] ‘too soon’ or ‘uncomfortable’ to do so for others.”

“As the lead designer for the People team last year, Gauri was invaluable to the team in being able to support design needs for projects of all scopes. … Single-handedly led and continues to lead all design efforts for the People maker team including but not limited to: Referrals Patient Watchlist, Checklist reworks for iPad Mini and Escalations, Redesigning the Sprinter Go Bag, Sprinter Prep Guide, Sprinter Profile Management and much more!”

“She’s a team player in a demanding startup who is always willing to listen and integrate feedback. This steadfastness to changing demands and rework cannot be understated!”

“One of Gauri’s strengths is her ability to bring innovative ideas and identify unconventional opportunities that excite and inspire the team. For example, Gauri raised awareness of an emerging opportunity to leverage AI technology to provide a seamless and effortless documentation experience for Sprinters, which could have a significant impact.”

“I have watched and continue to hear Gauri’s driving force with QBO Contractors. She breaks down barriers when it comes to solving customer problems.”

“Gauri was instrumental in managing the projects and insuring that the development team completed them to the highest standard possible. … Gauri also has the unique gift of being able to recognize the true potential of a design concept in order to assist the team in bringing out its full potential. I most importantly recognized her ability to communicate effectively to all parties involved (client, development team, salesperson & management).”

“Her ability to bring together resources and knowledge from different departments and sources is unmatched, and her excellent communication skills allow her to understand the needs of different stakeholders and align them towards a common goal.”

“During our first couple of 1:1s it was apparent how patient, yet passionate you are about your work regarding QBO Contractors. … I noticed how you[r] patience and passion help boost other’s confidence in ideas, making for a fruitful meeting.”

“Her ability to create elegant thoughtful solutions for the contractor project in ways that seemed almost effortless!”

“As a web designer, it’s such [a] tremendous help to have someone like Gauri working the UX side of things. She does great research and always had all of the UX corners covered, while looking for emerging trends to help push the client in new helpful directions. Her easy going and kind personality truly set her apart and made her a pleasure to work with.”

“[She] has pushed for conversations around more alignment around product strategy which led the People maker team to start drafting OKRs as well as working with ops in a more proactive fashion. … On behalf of the Maker Team, thank you for your consistent hard work and reliability.”

“She is a true role model and a leader. She involves everyone needed in the journey to deliver the best customer experience. She constantly seeks peer and customers feedback to iterate on the design. … She is super organized with a complicated project like this with so many moving parts. She was able to pull it off with her energy and enthusiasm to learn fast and win together.”

“You are extremely passionate about design, our product and the work you do to solve problems for our business and our customers. It shows in everything you do: you’re hardworking, thorough, diligent, proactive and persistent … stopping at nothing.”

“Gauri is someone who doesn’t hold back and leaves no stone unturned. She strikes me as the type of person who sprints to the finish line at the end of long runs. That said, very impressed with her work ethic and critical thinking skills. Thankful to have her as a partner on the Help Center page on Zendesk.”

“Gauri is a brilliant, collaborative designer who gains massive respect from cross-functional colleagues. She demonstrated a rigorous method for mentoring junior and mid-level colleagues I assigned her.”

“Gauri is such a team player and steps up to help the team achieve its goals, no questions asked. In an ever changing environment, her flexibility and adaptability is so appreciated by the team. She has been such a valuable resource for me and I have felt very comfortable reaching out to her.”

“You are excelling at being a leader to provide social and user testing proof through design experiments. The wall that you put together with user stories and research was not only inspiring but impressive. Keep up the great work and strong design rationale.”

“Her mentorship was (and continues to be) deeply appreciated, and it’s been so exciting to see her move into leadership, where her impact can reach more widely across products and teams.”

“… Gauri has exemplified so many of the attributes that Intuit values. It’s what makes her not only a great designer, but also a great colleague and mentor as well. Her work in developing the contractor ecosystem research, prototypes, and designs is a testament to the strength of her work and mastery of her craft.”

“Gauri’s invaluable feedback and advice helps me grow. She consistently provided useful, actionable feedback, including organizing work in Figma and documenting designs with a narrative to engage the team. … Her well-structured process and the sound rationale behind her decisions and work set a great example for designers like me and inspired me to strive for excellence.”