Portfolio: www.heathercassano.com Heather has spent the past two decades leading user experience design teams at technology and education companies including Google, Yahoo and Pearson Education. She is known throughout the industry as a “change agent” and a collaborative, creative problem-solver. Heather has a long track record of delivering disruptive product innovations within a variety of vertical markets. She is a passionate advocate for the creation of great products that solve real user needs. She has created hundreds of product experiences for a diverse set of users, devices, and industries. Heather is the inventor of the "Lightning Lab"- a four-day intensive, agile design method utilized by a significant number of companies with great success. In addition to her day job, over the past two decades Heather has held university appointments at Harvard, UCLA and Marist College. Heather is a frequent speaker at industry events including the recent Reframe Design event in San Francisco, the Digital Publishing Innovation Summit in New York City, the MarketingEdge conference in San Diego and the Next Generation Summit in Austin. She is the Primary Inventor for two patents for her work at Sun Microsystems and at Yahoo and has been retained as an expert witness in several user experience lawsuits. Heather was featured in "Profiles of Women in Human Computer Interaction" by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology as part of the Carnegie Mellon University’s Masters of Human-Computer Interaction. Women in the field of Human Computer Interaction who have broken through the “glass ceiling” in the industry were selected.

Director of User Experience, Display Ads @ Heather leads a cross-disciplinary team of user experience designers, researchers, and prototypers across multiple product lines and geographies. From December 2014 to Present (1 year 1 month) Adjunct Professor @ From August 2011 to Present (4 years 5 months) Chief Experience Officer @ Heather served as the first Chief Experience Officer at Scholastic, working to create and implement Scholastic’s next generation digital learning experiences for students, teachers, parents and administrators. Heather led a team of designers, researchers, product managers, editorial and front-end developers with a shared mission to create holistic, responsive and adaptive user experiences for all of Scholastic’s users. From February 2014 to December 2014 (11 months) Greater New York City AreaChief Experience Officer @ Heather served as the first Chief Experience Officer for Pearson Education, leading Pearson’s many user experience design and research teams. Heather’s responsibility spanned across Pearson’s educational product line from kindergarten through college, and included the design of next-generation user experiences that satisfied the needs of learners, teachers, administrators and parents. Heather also oversaw the company’s “Voice of the Customer” program that collects and disseminates data about Pearson’s products and incorporates the results back into product development, and the company’s user accessibility program, ensuring that design solutions accommodate users with differences. Heather managed 80+ user experience designers, researchers, engineers and accessibility specialists. From May 2011 to January 2014 (2 years 9 months) Greater New York City AreaSr. Director of User Experience Design @ Heather led the User Experience teams for the Enterprise and Advertising divisions of Yahoo, responsible the design of all Advertising, Publishing and Consumer Ad products across Yahoo including Yahoo Apt, Yahoo Small Business, Yahoo Search Marketing, Yahoo Display Ads, Video Players and other products. From June 2007 to May 2011 (4 years) Adjunct Professor @ From September 2003 to June 2009 (5 years 10 months) Staff User Experience Designer @ Heather designed Google social networking and consumer products, including Picasa Web Albums, Google Toolbar, Google Archive and Google Book Search. From July 2006 to June 2007 (1 year) Principal User Interface Director @ Heather managed and oversaw design efforts for the new 2006 consumer product launch of the “Norton” products as well as several enterprise products. From August 2003 to July 2006 (3 years) User Interface Architect @ Heather oversaw the design and development of the new 5.0 product line, a suite of enterprise products allowing for user data collection modeling utilizing Java, XSLT and JSP, Business Process Modeling and others. Heather served as the primary designer, architect and trainer, directing all designs and architecture decisions and then overseeing the implementation. From August 2001 to August 2003 (2 years 1 month) VP of User Experience @ Heather led the Digitas User Interface team and contributed to many client projects including L.L. Bean, American Century, Fleet Bank, General Motors (including several different sub-brands - Pontiac, GMC, SAAB), Neiman Marcus (Chefs Catalog), Liberty Mutual, American Express, and others. In addition, Heather taught routinely over-subscribed classes on user interface methodologies. From August 1999 to August 2001 (2 years 1 month) Adjunct Instructor @ From September 1994 to June 2001 (6 years 10 months) Principal & Founder @ Heather was founder and President of Acacia Design, Inc., a consulting and training company specializing in user interface design and development. Projects included: - Design and development of a java-based authoring tool called Jamba Animator which allows users to easily create animated web applications. - Design and development of a high performance graphics system in C++ and Windows NT for Hewlett Packard which displayed animated waveforms for medical patient monitoring. - Design and development of several custom class hierarchies in Visual C++ including a set of handwriting recognition ActiveX controls for Nestor Corporation, graphic controls for Microsoft’s Microsoft Money, charting and screen building controls for Cahners Publishing and an interactive flow chart control for Separations Technology. - Design and prototype of an object-oriented GUI for Fidelity’s Fund Managers in order to leverage internal research. From 1991 to 1999 (8 years) User Interface Engineer @ Heather designed, implemented and deployed a complex XView toolkit extension in C++/ Unix called the Browser Graphical User Interface. Heather served as lead engineer on this project, which consisted of providing a visual, interactive method for applications to graphically display and zoom in and out of large numbers of objects. From 1989 to 1991 (2 years) Software Design Engineer @ Heather designed and developed user experiences for computer library systems serving both librarians and patrons. From 1987 to 1989 (2 years)

MFA, Creative Writing and Literature @ Bennington College From 2008 to 2010 BACS, Comp Science/ Cog Psych @ Boston College From 1987 to 1991 Comp Science & Human Factors Engineering @ Tufts University From 1985 to 1987 Heather Cassano is skilled in: Usability Testing, Interaction Design, Flash, HTML, User Experience, User Interface Design, Information Architecture, User Interface, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience Design, Usability, Web Applications, Java, Rapid Prototyping, Web Design