About
Short
I’m Eli, a design leader who turns complex systems into simple solutions. Today, I lead the lending experience design team at Upstart, working to reduce the cost and complexity of borrowing for all Americans.
Before Upstart, I led design at three mission-driven, growth-stage startups. At Omada Health, I built products that help millions of Americans manage chronic conditions, and the team that helped take the company to IPO. At Elemy and Ghost, I built complex marketplaces that wove automation and service into one cohesive, end-to-end experience.
My approach is highly collaborative and focused on creating the conditions for teams to do great work. I zoom in and out, partnering closely with product, engineering, and cross-functional leaders, and staying deep in the work with my designers so every team ships cohesive experiences that deliver real outcomes.
I build products and teams that turn complex systems into simple solutions, delivering real value to the business and the customer.
Experience
Leading three teams across growth, unsecured, and secured lending, building seamless end-to-end experiences that reduce the cost and complexity of borrowing for all Americans.
2026 - Now
Led product design, brand, and user research. Established and scaled the design function and built the first private B2B marketplace for excess inventory, helping every product reach its full potential.
2023 - 2026
Built and scaled a global team across product design, user research, and content design. Launched a pediatric behavioral health marketplace during the pandemic, starting with autism care, at a SoftBank-backed hypergrowth company.
2021 - 2023
Built 0-to-1 behavior change products that helped millions of Americans manage chronic disease. Led the product design, user research, and content design teams and a company rebrand, helping pave the way to IPO.
2018 - 2021
Built products, brands, and experiences with Fortune 100 companies and early-stage startups across healthcare, education, enterprise software, and consumer electronics.
2014 - 2018Long
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been driven to make things. Inspired by skateboarding, hip hop, graffiti, and punk, I started out designing album covers and show posters while studying design. Working part-time as a designer to pay for school created an interesting tension: learning the foundational principles of design while looking for near-term, tangible lessons I could apply to my day job. That grew into identities, websites, and freelance work with early-stage startups.
Those projects landed me at frog, where I got a crash course in human-centered design and research-driven product strategy. I spent four and a half years designing for early-stage startups and Fortune 100 companies alongside some of the best designers in the industry. I’m deeply grateful to everyone there who helped me build the foundation for the rest of my career.
From there, I dove headfirst into startups and learned to lead as a head of design. At Omada Health, I partnered with behavioral scientists to build behavior change products that helped millions of Americans manage chronic conditions, and built the design team and product that helped pave the way to the company’s IPO.
During the pandemic, I joined Elemy to lead design, building a global design function and a pediatric behavioral health marketplace that wove automation and service into one cohesive, end-to-end experience for families and providers.
After relocating back to LA, I joined Ghost to lead product and design, building a B2B marketplace for excess inventory. At both companies, I built the product and team through product-market fit and into growth stage, raising multiple rounds of funding at combined valuations of more than $2B. I’m incredibly proud of the products and teams we built. Those years rounded out my experience, so I’m as comfortable in the boardroom as I am in the pixels.
After 15 years of building in high-growth startups, I took time at the start of 2026 to get intentional about the next chapter of my career. I wanted to bring everything I’d learned to a later-stage company, where I could lead a strong team, build meaningful products at scale, and keep growing alongside people I respect.
I found that at Upstart, where I lead the lending experience design team as Director of Product Design. It’s a company with a mission I believe in and a healthy culture that’s rare to find. It’s a mutually beneficial fit, focused on improving the end-to-end experience across our core customer journeys and elevating the influence and impact of the design function. The team is incredibly talented, and we’ve already got some exciting product launches on the way. I’m feeling optimistic about this next chapter.
If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably trying to understand other people’s career journeys to better design your own. If so, have a look at Designing Your Career, an article I recently published. And if you’ve been searching for a while: it’s a different job market than it used to be, but the right role is out there. Keep searching. Onward and upward, always.