Resume | Charla Myers
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| resume_charla_myers_cdm.pdf |
Professional Experience
OVERVIEW
Zendesk | San Francisco, 2020–2024
Lead Content Designer for Growth & Monetization (G&M)
City National Bank / Apex Systems | Los Angeles, 2019–2020
UX Manager / Lead Content Designer
Elastic | Mountain View, 2017–2018
Content Strategist / Copywriter
Halton Pardee + Partners | Los Angeles, 2016–2017
Client Experience Manager
Lead Content Designer
Viking Ocean Cruises / Phenomenon | Los Angeles, 2012–2013
Lead Content Designer
LG / Publicis Modem | New York, 2013–2016
Lead Content Designer
Grey Worldwide | New York, 2008–2009
Creative Director
Digitas | New York, 2005–2009
Lead Content Designer
- User Experience expert who shrewdly develops human-centered solutions for business growth.
- Influential communicator who gains buy-in from all stakeholder levels around bold, strategic ideas.
- Globally experienced colleague and team builder, primarily remote since 2013, I’ve successfully led projects with teams based in New York, Toronto, Dublin, London, Copenhagen, Kyiv, Pune, Melbourne, and more.
Zendesk | San Francisco, 2020–2024
Lead Content Designer for Growth & Monetization (G&M)
- Provided design leadership and guidance for high-impact revenue areas.
- Mentored peers and juniors designers for both career goals and projects, plus championed cultural alignment through “buddy” program, office hours, crits, and 1:1s.
- Established the current “free trial” framework, plus designed many A/B experiments for scaled improvement.
- Lifted “go live” rate ~55% by introducing a Help panel with specialty content that made product setup easier.
- Led writing projects across business groups: branded videos, technical documentation, and marketing emails.
- Conducted UX research on product terminology to ensure understanding and localization quality.
- Created a product adoption framework to bring consistency across all product teams, this included:
- Established principles and guidelines for feature adoption.
- Developed a half-day workshop template that helps teams find best contextual moments to prompt a user.
- Released a mini-design system for adoption components that included in-depth documentation.
- Recruited speakers and produced an internal symposium with 10 teams across business divisions.
City National Bank / Apex Systems | Los Angeles, 2019–2020
UX Manager / Lead Content Designer
- Served as long-term interim team manager—oversaw daily operations for 9 employees and contractors.
- Managed projects from needs assessment to implementation as well as identified opportunities, established priorities, secured resources, and collaborated with stakeholders.
- Created content and user flows for 53 features in 15 weeks as the sole content designer for a new mobile app.
- Wrote research protocols and surveys, plus synthesized results into strategic reports.
- Established voice, tone, language, and style to be implemented for all post-auth digital initiatives.
- Led cross-functional design thinking workshops to ensure user-centered design was at the core of products.
- Developed strong relationships with large Legal and Compliance teams to gain content approval, while ensuring required copy was understandable to everyday people.
Elastic | Mountain View, 2017–2018
Content Strategist / Copywriter
- Increased employment applications by ~25% by creating content that focused on company culture.
- Developed content strategy for global employee handbook (100+ page document).
Halton Pardee + Partners | Los Angeles, 2016–2017
Client Experience Manager
- Boosted staff retention by 35% through quantitative and qualitative analysis—this led to operational improvements for the sales team and a reduction of CRM workflow by over 50 steps.
- Developed systems, standards, and workflows to improve cross-functional collaboration.
- Wrote all B2C automated and lifecycle emails for customer acquisition, conversion, growth, and loyalty— communicating benefits, sales process, and company’s value proposition.
- Established and wrote a monthly inbound email campaign that averaged 44% open and 6% click-through rates.
- Created materials and conducted weekly CRM training for 35 sales agents.
Lead Content Designer
- Developed editorial style, voice, tone, and content for 8 internal apps.
- Mapped data dictionaries and system responses, plus created content strategy, UI labels, text, and training materials for an internal Warner/Chappell product that handled $1.5B in transactions annually.
- Led development and implementation of a new Helpdesk app that resulted in a 25% reduction of IT requests.
Viking Ocean Cruises / Phenomenon | Los Angeles, 2012–2013
Lead Content Designer
- Launched Viking Ocean Cruises: a $5mm global initiative for a new “affordable luxury” brand.
- Managed and provided creative direction to the freelance copy team.
- Coproduced with Lead UX Designer a mental model, experience map, UX strategy, and wireframes.
- Created the brand voice, content strategy, messaging plan, plus a taxonomy for 2600+ cruise options that ensured continuity across all materials—catalog, website, video, email, and apps.
LG / Publicis Modem | New York, 2013–2016
Lead Content Designer
- Provided creative direction and product management for the internal copy team.
- Increased post-purchase engagement of product education that led to an 8% increase in customer satisfaction.
- Developed personas, created messaging plans, and worked collaboratively with designers to define UI features.
Grey Worldwide | New York, 2008–2009
Creative Director
- Acted as creative lead in developing interactive concepts for a variety of clients: E*Trade, Playtex (infant care), Lilly (Evista), Purolator (oil filters), Pantene, Penguin Books, and Longhorn Steakhouse.
- Managed ~12 direct reports and resource allocations for all digital projects
Digitas | New York, 2005–2009
Lead Content Designer
- Acted as digital creative lead for a variety of American Express properties and projects.
- Managed 2 direct reports, responsible for department-wide copywriter resource allocations, plus created Portfolio Club.
Skills
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User experience & content capabilities
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Marketing experience
Working competencies
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Education
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University of Southern California,
Viterbi School of Engineering Certificate in Data Analytics Boston University, College of Communication Bachelor of Science in Broadcasting + Film |
Workshops & volunteer opportunities
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Clients + Agencies
Working on significant projects in a variety of industries helped me learn the fundamentals for many businesses.
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Clients
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Agencies
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