Vanessa Kirby
Making messy change workable.

Product-led design leadership at scale

+ GTM strategy

+ Team-building and operations

+ Chief of Staff & operating model

Ex M&S · Argos · BT Financial

CORE EXPERIENCE

Strategic Capabilities

Every customer journey runs through the whole business behind it. I work across all of it - commercial, operations, engineering, brand and customer support - to find what’s really holding growth back and fix it. Unclear strategy, too many priorities, fragmented teams: I can walk into the mess and make it workable.

Commercial Impact

Owning the number
Accountable for conversion, retention and new market targets - US market entry and a regulated investor marketplace at SeedLegals, from idea to live.

Products that change the bottom line
M&S Christmas food to order (300-450% YoY growth) and the Argos selling journey redesign, part of the shift from 33% to 66% online revenue. Fast to market for incremental revenue tweaks (SeedLegals Boost)

ARGOS PLP REDESIGN

M&S FURNITURE >

rapid mobilisation >

Change

AI in delivery
AI prototyping, PM-owned evals and agent-ready stories - plus exco-level AI streamlining across engineering, product and CX.

Building teams
Teams of 30+ at M&S, Argos and BT, in complex matrix organisations.

Transforming traditional businesses
Argos’s move from store-first to digital-first - plus business sponsor for Agile adoption at BT Financial Group, across 17 product streams during growth to 78% market share.

GTM operational plan >

Building a design function >

How the business runs

Chief of staff, in practice
Extended Exco at SeedLegals - planning, OKR and GTM cadence. Founder priorities translated into coordinated delivery across product, engineering, marketing, operations and customer support

International
In-country delivery across London, Sydney, Melbourne, USA, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Workflow optimisation

Reducing operational cost >

CURRENT POSITIONS

Director of UX Design & Product Ops

April 2022 - Present

SeedLegals London
LegalTech SaaS scale-up

Member of the Extended Exco, with chief of staff responsibilities to the founder and CEO - translating company priorities into coordinated delivery across the business. Accountable for UX, visual design and product management across the SaaS platform, connected services and commercial website.

Strategy and operations

Introduced strategic planning, OKR and GTM rhythms, creating a clear operating cadence across product, design, engineering, marketing and CX
Translate founder and CEO priorities into cross-functional execution, aligning teams without formal authority
Co-sponsored, with the Director of Strategy, an exco-level programme on AI-driven change across engineering, product and CX, with material implications for company structure
Led AI integration programmes to improve operational efficiency and reduce support costs

Product and growth

Led delivery from concept to GTM for two major bets: US market entry for the founder product, and a regulated investor marketplace (deal flow to portfolio management)
Product and feature launches supporting 15% year-on-year revenue growth

Design and delivery

Built the UX and product design practice, embedding design in every product and engineering team and moving to company-wide collaborative discovery
Introduced service blueprinting to find manual processes to automate on platform
Moved from Figma to AI prototyping, with stories written for agents as well as engineers

View my full CV View case studies