Jeremy Smith

Strategic leader and systems thinker with over 20 years of experience in product design, including 12+ years dedicated to complex, regulated HealthTech ecosystems. 10 years experience hiring and coaching high-performing teams while setting hands-on design direction for multi-team portfolios spanning consumer care journeys, virtual visits, and enterprise clinical workflows. Focused on leveraging AI and human-centered design to simplify complex decisions and deliver measurable business value.

Senior Director of Product Strategy at Optum (2023-02 – 2025-11)

• Led strategic product initiatives within Corporate Strategy, focusing on high-stakes healthcare outcomes, cross-functional digital transformation, and go/no-go decisioning on new product concepts.
• Defined the operational framework for AI utilization, establishing a scalable roadmap that aligned engineering and business units toward customer-led outcomes, increasing AI adoption by 12%.
• Developed a proprietary ROI framework to quantifiably measure experiential outcomes, ensuring product initiatives directly impacted market-fit and resource allocation.
• Acted as the senior point of contact for high-priority partnerships, navigating complex regulatory (HIPAA/Compliance) and technical constraints to deliver cohesive product growth.

Director of Product Strategy & Customer Growth at Optum (2020-09 – 2023-02)

• Oversaw a scaling product design team across six locations, supporting digital experiences for 80M+ end-users and scaling an enterprise product culture that aligns human-centered outcomes with high-impact business growth.
• Launched a Clinical Immersion Program that translated user insights into long-term digital roadmaps, driving organizational growth through deeper stakeholder empathy.
• Led the product strategy for a behavioral health solution using automated interventions, simplifying care-seeking journeys for diverse patient populations.
• Led the redesign of the national Provider Portal, streamlining multi-step workflows for 90k+ doctors and their staff, achieving a 21% reduction in average time-to-complete for key actions.

Product Manager at Optum (2018-02 – 2020-09)

• Led the creation and execution of product roadmaps using RICE and Kano prioritization to balance rapid response initiatives with long-term (Horizon 2/3) concepts.
• Authored PRDs and managed the experience strategy for a virtual care delivery platform, overseeing the full shopping-to-care journey during peak market shifts.
• Unified fragmented patient health apps and converted functionality into a single, cohesive digital channel, increasing user self-service by 47% and decreasing support friction.
• Managed high-stakes consent protocols for the Genomics England program in a strictly regulated environment.

Product Manager, Systems & Delivery at Optum (2016-08 – 2018-02)

• Engineered robust HTML/JS prototypes and custom libraries to automate build specifications, significantly reducing technical debt (45% reduction in errors) and ensuring 100% cross-platform consistency and accessibility (WCAG) compliance.
• Spearheaded the delivery of integrated patient and provider portals for regional health systems, managing the successful rollout of unified digital experiences across the national network.
• Acted as the primary bridge between technical requirements and user-centered strategy, utilizing automated guidance to streamline the handoff process from concept to production-ready build.

Senior UI Designer & Data Strategist at UnitedHealth Group (2013-08 – 2016-08)

• Developed benefit portals for the Medicare demographic and wellness portals for population health, utilizing cognitive science to drive behavior change and program engagement.
• Designed dashboards to transform healthcare economics data into actionable insights for senior leadership prioritization.

Strategic Consultant at Independent (2012-01 – Present)

• Over a decade partnering with start-ups, established brands, and non-profits to turn ideas into effective experiences. Currently helping a company define and implement customer relations strategies in bio-pharma.

Information Architect & UX Designer

E-commerce and Business Operations / Intelligence Platforms

Graphic/Print Designer & Developer

Branding and Digital Marketing

Certificate in Systems Thinking – Cornell University

Graduate in Graphic Design & Art Direction – Portfolio Center

B.A. in Fine Arts / Graphic Design – Indiana University

A.A.S. in Commercial Art & Advertising – Jefferson Community & Technical College