Highlights:

  • Designed, researched, built Fivestars’ first payments processor through a lean and iterative process

  • Partnered finance team and CEO to build investor decks to secure funding

  • Managed strategic partnerships to concept and test Fivestars’ first mobile ordering experience (Beta)

  • Overhaul of Fivestars brand and product suite supported by merchant and consumer research

  • Identifies the highest value cross-functional design needs

  • Rebranded Fivestar’s merchant and consumer product suite, elevating the perceived value of Fivestars products

Fivestars by SumUp

Oct 2017-Present

Lead designer, scaled the design team, managed the design and research output, develop and define the future vision of Fivestars, concept and analyze new product features with hands-on research experience, advocated for user needs, DE&I workforce reform consultant.

Product Experience

Concourse

Jan 2016 - Dec 2018 (2 years)

I founded Concourse.co, a boot-strapped and launched a P2P marketplace for artists to book art studios for daily and monthly rates. Studios included dance studios, recording studios, art studios and more in the local Bay Area. Concourse.co platform was shut down in 2018.

Highlights:

  • Concept, tested, launched lean platform

  • Developed product strategy requirements and hired engineers to build MVP

  • Onboarded 100 studios in San Francisco

  • Collected user feedback and created pricing models

  • Developed and launched marketing strategies (email campaigns, social platforms, gorilla marketing etc.)

Lead Design Contractor

Apr 2011 - Aug 2017 (6 years)

Ran my own design consultancy for 6 years. Directing and mentoring various product teams internationally. I had the pleasure of working with Big Spaceship, Interbrand, UrbanDaddy, Holografik, and Punchcut to name a few. I’ve led product teams for small and medium sized startups and agencies. I designed marketing websites, mini-games, social marketing campaigns, desktop and mobile apps for various clients, such as Dignity Health, eBay, Skype, Airbnb, Urbandaddy, Chobani, Qooco and many more.

Highlights:

  • Experience working with domestic and international remote teams (New York, Japan, China, Argentina, India).

  • Growing and supporting small product and creative agency teams

  • Working with a wide spectrum of multi-disciplinary teams

  • UI, UI, AI, Illustration, and design strategy experience

Big Spaceship

2007 - 2011 (4 years, 3 mo.)

I’ve had the pleasure of working with on so many products at different stages of their product life cycle for notable clients, such as MoMA, G&E, Linden Labs, Alienware, Sony Pictures, Microsoft, Glaceau Water, Land’s End, and Wrigley to name a few. Big Spaceship’s core competencies include Mobile, Social Media, E-Commerce, Branded Content/Entertainment, Marketing Technologies/Analytics, Strategy and Planning, Technology, Retail, Entertainment, Consumer Research.

Highlights:

• Co-directed Wrigley Skittles website, campaigns, and social media campaigns

• Designed mini-games for Sony Pictures, including the Terminator Salvation, Bond, 30 days of Night, and Underworld movies.

• Design MoMA stop-motion interactive experience for Tim Burton exhibition

• Illustration for FITC, Tokyo marketing materials.

• Extensive UI, UX, AI, Illustration, Animation, Motion experience

• Big Spaceship featured Communication Arts

• Growing and supporting small product and creative agency teams

• Working with a wide spectrum of multi-disciplinary teams

• UI, UI, AI, Illustration, and design strategy experience

Haas School of Business • May 2021

BFFF is a platform to connect female founders + funders so we can create a more gender-equal entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Women Who Launch was hosted by Claudia Wong in Berkley, Ca.

A minimum viable product is a product with enough features to attract early-adopter customers and validate a product idea early in the product development cycle. Creating the right MVP is crucial for your startup to be successful, especially at an early age. How can you build the right MVP for your startup? Learn from women product and design leaders at Fivestars, a YC Top 100 startup, in this fireside chat.

Remote speakers: Shinyoung Park, Sarah Calvillo, Ashleigh Waise, Claudia Wong, and Mary Dyer

Women Who Launch by BFF

Speaking Engagements

San Francisco State University • Feb 2017

INCUBED, founded in 2015, hosts a variety of events that brings the best ideas to SF State and challenges our students to innovate, ideate, hack, protoype and build solutions for a better world. INCUBED invites Sarah Calvillo to speak about her startup, Concourse, connecting affordable studio to artists.

INCUBED

University of California, Davis

Bachelor of Science, Graphics & Communication

Education