Grace Sunnell

“If I could describe Grace with a single word (not that it would suffice, nor would I normally opt to), it would be: resilience. I had the great fortune of having Grace as a part of my team at 2U. During the time we worked together, I observed not only great passion, talent, and skill, but also the technical and deeply strategic skill to ensure her work had the most impact—every time. Regardless of the constraints, shifts in strategy, or mid-stream changes that came up, Grace was always at the ready to shift her mindset—and her design work—to address the novel needs that would come up and let her process move at the speed of the business. As a designer, she is highly skilled across all facets of product design and was often recognized across the business (albeit indirectly) for her contributions to the design of our platforms. Beyond that, given the space of the business and the nature of the platforms she worked on, she was also coming into her own as a skilled service designer, working with teams across the business and her peers in tech to ensure that the processes and needs of the business and users (internal and external) were clearly taken into account in her work, always raising flags and identifying risks that others may not have seen. On the team, she was an absolute joy to have, always taking point in creating and managing not just rituals and processes, but also team-building and morale-boosting activities to ensure that her team and her peers were happy and comfortable at work. Overall, she was a crucial part of the team (one that will be sorely missed), and it’s been a great thrill to watch her grow into her own on her career, and make strident advancement from designer, to leader. I am excited to see where her career goes and will be following closely—and you can bet that I would jump at the chance to work together again. ”

“Grace is one of the most talented designers I have ever worked with. She has all of the skills I look for in a design colleague. She has a fantastic eye for design and a strong artistic vision. Her work is able to balance both function and beauty. From a UX perspective, Grace also has a rare ability to balance the need for a strategic product vision and the ability to deliver on tactical design artifacts. Grace can simultaneously design at the 10K foot and the 2mm view. Whether we were building a new product line or iterating on products we already had, Grace was always the voice of reason in the room getting people to think about what should we make for this product now, and how will this product evolve over several years. She can think critically about workflows and information architecture, while still being able to deliver design comps that solve more tactical usability issues. Grace is fast, but also thoughtful. She has the capacity to turn around work quickly to meet deadlines, yet is always pushing us to consider the bigger picture. Grace is also a true user-centric designer. She has lead several, fairly complicated user research initiatives by herself to great success. When working with researchers like myself, Grace would help in any way possible. Sometimes she would help direct the research design, and other times she would simply sit in on sessions to learn. She was often the voice of the user in meetings with product managers and engineers. Her ability to balance user needs with business needs is a key to her success as a strong product strategist and product designer. Perhaps more importantly, Grace is a huge asset to team culture. I've never met anyone who didn't love working with Grace. She is approachable, positive, fun, and cares deeply about team health. She was consistently setting up monthly team lunches, planning fun team outings, helping our team discuss design inspiration, facilitating retros, and finding new ways to build team cohesion. She is such a joy to work with; I am jealous of anyone who gets the opportunity to work with her more in the future. ”