I turn complex product decisions into direction teams can build from.
I lead product strategy and design inside companies where the roadmap is full and the hard part is choosing. I work backend-first, separating what is genuinely difficult from what only sounds difficult. The team gets a product direction it can build from, with the hard decisions made visible.
Today I run Bayesian Leaf, a fractional product and design leadership practice for AI-native companies. I also serve as fractional Head of Design for an applied AI platform where analysts act on automated output under time pressure. Previously Pinterest, Meta, Opendoor, and CNN. MBA in applied AI.
Work
The standard four teams shipped against.
Performance+ made automation something advertisers could trust.
Signals, not constraints.
Advertisers were asking for controls that would have broken the automation that was working.
The navigation advertisers stopped working around.
Eight organizations, one ads platform, and advertisers routing around its navigation.
The blueprint the organization reshaped around.
Launch was solved. The day after launch was not.
Three platforms became one.
Targeting had to get smarter while learning less.
The framework any team could ship with.
Automated ad-delivery advice only works if advertisers listen. They had learned to ignore it.
An engine that remembers what happened.
An AI narrative system I designed end to end: it verifies real history, then feeds a character engine so every adventure recalls the last.
Endorsements
“Always 3 steps ahead, Hew is a true mastermind and strategic connector who innately identifies gaps, opportunities and patterns across a product.”
“Formally titled a designer, but constantly acting as a little bit of everything: a strategic researcher, a technologist, a product manager.”
“Hew's willingness to challenge the status quo and advocate for solutions more durable and representative of customer needs stood out. The framework he outlined, and leading that discussion across teams, led to more structured conversations about the future of the platform.”
“Influencing roadmaps with the optimal set up framework, it's difficult not to feel the impact you've had. You've become a leader that our cross-functional partners want in the room.”
Reviews on LinkedIn, ADPList, and IGotAnOffer. Internal quotes from Pinterest review cycles.
Practice & Ventures
Bayesian Leaf
My product and design practice for companies building with AI. The point of view I sharpened here: the problem is rarely design, it's decision infrastructure. Today that means fractional Head of Design for an applied AI platform serving analysts in intelligence and insurance.
Human Commons
My product studio. Most products build a world and ask you to move into it. These enter the one you already live in. Two products so far, both built solo, and both start from a person and a place.
Writing
Essays on decision infrastructure and building AI-native products.
Read moreSupportive and collaborative are phases, not ranks.
About
I'm a child of journalists, so I grew up in and out of newsrooms. A newsroom does one thing: it takes something complicated and makes it usable to somebody who has to act on it. That is what I have done for seventeen years. The ad platforms at Meta and Pinterest, the operations behind Opendoor, mobile news at CNN. The same instinct now runs through Bayesian Leaf, where I apply it inside other companies, and Human Commons, where I build products of my own.
I build the things that outlast me. Frameworks other teams chose to build against, at Meta and again at Pinterest. The Pinterest framework began before the work had a mandate. A governance process that continued deciding what shipped after I left. A leveling framework a growing design team will hire against. A designer who now leads a product line of their own. I write code because a picture of a thing will not tell you whether it works, and I lead to make a team faster rather than more dependent on me.
Design got me to the room. The MBA gave me the language for what happens in it.
Bring me the messy version. It's usually the part I like best.