Blackwell Security

Head of Product Design - Seed to Series A

Executive Summary

  • First design hire at seed-stage, pre-revenue startup

  • Defined and led the creation of Blackwell Pulse, the client-facing healthcare security platform

  • Aligned 7 engineers and security stakeholders around a unified product vision

  • Design artifacts helped unlock $13M Series A

  • The platform became the core go-to-market vehicle and remains in use post-acquisition

Business Context

Blackwell was a seed-stage healthcare-focused cybersecurity startup preparing for Series A. The company had strong MDR expertise but no defined client-facing product.

The vision was to create an AI-powered security platform designed for healthcare CISOs and analysts. This market faces unique risks and had no MDR solution built just for them.

When I joined, there was no product yet, just some early data structures and basic processes taking shape.

The Problem

Healthcare is the most attacked industry, yet cybersecurity tooling is largely generic.

Users faced:

  • Fragmented data across multiple systems

  • Overwhelming noise

  • No normalized view of security posture

  • No structured collaboration with MDR providers

Inside the company, teams were not on the same page about how to communicate in the portal, present security posture, or highlight MDR work.

We were building from zero.

Early Concept  - Visibility Dashboard
Early Concept - Asset Ops

Leadership And Alignment

As the first design leader, I built the product (the Blackwell Pulse platform) from scratch.

I partnered with seven engineers across security and software disciplines and introduced:

  • Internal workshops to define MVP focus

  • Iterative vision artifacts to drive alignment

  • New review formats to help technical stakeholders engage with UX strategy

At first, some security team members were skeptical, but as I built trust and showed my technical skills, we became more aligned.


Design System Work
Design System Work
Design System Work

Strategic Decisions

Make Security Legible

We turned complex risk signals into clear, easy-to-understand views for healthcare leaders.

Systematize MDR Collaboration

We added clear points of contact in the platform so clients and security analysts could work together in the same space.

Consolidate Fragmentation

We unified the customer experience of disconnected backend processes into a coherent information architecture and navigation model.

Pulse became the shared workspace between healthcare organizations and Blackwell’s MDR team.

Data Sources Panel
Response Ops Dashboard
Remediation Campaign Tracker

Execution Highlights

  • Defined Pulse information architecture

  • Built a design system from scratch

  • Used interactive prototypes to validate core workflows

  • The design work became the foundation for the engineering roadmap.

MDR Monthly Service Report
Security Signals Dashboard
Prioritized Intelligence Requirements View

Impact

  • Instrumental in securing $13M Series A

  • Enabled early sales conversations while MVP was in development

  • This helped the engineering team focus and made things clearer for everyone.

  • Pulse became the public face of Blackwell and remains in use after Ostra Security acquired it.

Reflection

At Blackwell, design shaped the product, brought the team together, and helped secure funding and a successful acquisition.