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Chela Giraldo, Senior Product Designer, Design Systems & Accessibility
A dedicated, enthusiastic, and detail-obsessed Product Designer with 10+ years of experience in design. Specialized in building accessible and scalable design systems and user experiences that align business goals with user needs.
Work Experience
Aug 2023 - Current
UNQORK, Senior Product Designer, Design Systems & Accessibility
Aug 2023 - Current
- Sole design system designer, managing, maintaining, and scaling Unqork design system to ensure its adoption, continued relevance, and effectiveness for all users, including those with disabilities.
- Partnering with cross-functional teams to create 30+ reusable, accessible components, patterns, and interactions, enabling consistent and inclusive experiences across the product.
- Designed a token system and the Style Manager, an interface that enables clients to integrate and manage design tokens to apply their branding with our design system, maintaining consistent theming across complex applications and reducing manual styling efforts by 10×.
- Led Unqork’s accessibility efforts by integrating WCAG 2.2 and ADA in 30+ components, while also self-starting the accessibility settings initiative by conceptualizing, designing, pitching to leadership, and securing resources to implement 10 configurable settings exposed directly to users so they can build accessible applications without writing code. This work led to a 50% drop in customer issue tickets, 70% screen reader compliance, and 85% keyboard navigation coverage, secured contracts with 3+ major enterprise clients, and influenced new contracts where accessibility was a key decision factor.
- Led dark mode design across core components and pages, a top client and executive request. Partnered with ENG to ensure feasibility and QAed for design accuracy.
Sep 2022 - Aug 2023
UNQORK, Product Designer, Design Systems
Sep 2022 - Aug 2023
- Established processes to mentor designers and stakeholders in effectively using and adopting the design system by introducing weekly “design system office hours” to provide guidance, answer questions, and encourage collaboration.
- Enhanced documentation across design libraries to ensure designers and engineers have a shared understanding and can work seamlessly together.
- Implemented the migration of the design system from Angular to React, enhancing platform performance, accessibility, and scalability.
- Conducted accessibility audits to identify issues across the design system and platform, advocating for and leading initiatives to ensure WCAG and Section 508 compliance.
- Made critical changes to the design system and successfully scaled these enhancements to improve accessibility across the entire platform. This reduced accessibility-related bugs by 45%.
Mar 2022 - Sep 2022
REFLEXIONS AGENCY, UX/UI Designer
Mar 2022 - Sep 2022
- Designed 300+ screens for PATH's payment system - TAPP's visual language, UI library, and style guide, enabling 3 M+ riders to pay with debit and credit cards across customer and B2B sites.
- Led the full redesign of Foley’s website, guided by UX audits and stakeholder insights, to create a modern, accessible experience that boosted engagement, enhanced recruitment, and enabled CRM and analytics integration.
- Explored initial design exploration for WMATA (website not updated yet as of Q2 2025), focusing on enhancing the UX and modernizing the UI with an accessibility-first approach, aligned with customer needs, usability goals, and the organization’s new brand identity.
Sep 2021 - Mar 2022
CHARLES BUTT FOUNDATION, Senior Designer
Sep 2021 - Mar 2022
- Led the UI strategy and built the design system and documentation for the Charles Butt Foundation, ensuring design consistency and scalability across digital products in partnership with Web Developer.
- Co-designed the foundation’s website from the ground up in collaboration with the Art Director, focusing on accessibility, storytelling, and intuitive navigation. charlesbuttfdn.org
- Created wireframes, user flows, and interactive prototypes with micro-interactions to validate design decisions through user research and testing.
- Designed the visual identity for the Charles Butt Foundation, including brand guidelines, logo system, color palette, typography, illustrations, icons, social media content, print materials, and animations.
Dec 2020 - Jan 2022
RAISE YOUR HAND TEXAS , Senior Designer
Dec 2020 - Jan 2022
- Gathered, evaluated, and translated brand and user requirements into the style guide & design system for the RYHT website in collaboration with Web Developer and Art Director.
- Identified and troubleshot UX problems and their solutions.
- Created user flows, wireframes, prototypes, and micro-interactions to validate solutions in user testing.
- Conducted industry research and stayed up-to-date on best UI/UX practices.
Aug 2018 - Dec 2020
RAISE YOUR HAND TEXAS, Multimedia Designer
Aug 2018 - Dec 2020
- Developed the branding and all promotional content for 4 conferences, 20+ advocacy campaigns, the INTERSECT ED podcast, and 2 interactive polls on public education.
- Created concepts, layouts, and designs for program materials, websites, newsletters, blogs, social media, policy campaigns, print, digital advertising, event materials, presentations, signage, infographics, animations, and more.
- Provided pre-production, production, and post-production support for design, motion graphic, video, and photography projects.
Education
Jan 2008 - Dec 2016
2021 - 2021
Technology
- Figma
- Adobe Creative Suite
- Miro
- Usability Hub
- LottiFiles
- Asana
- Jira
Skills
- Design Systems
- Design Tokens
- Design System Adoption
- Design System Scalability
- Governance
- Accessibility
- WCAG 2.2
- ADA Section 508
- User Experience
- Usability Testing
- Prototyping
- Micro-Interactions
Languages
English
Proficient
Spanish
Native