John Solaro Email & Phone Number

Boston, Ma, Us

Head of Product Design for the Commerce line of business at Toast. Leading design, UX, and research across Point of Sale (POS) software and hardware, reporting and data experiences, International, Enterprise, generative AI experiences, and more.

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

Executive mentor in the Knowledge Circles for Impact program (https://kc4i.org) for leadership in Product Design, the flagship mentoring program from Women in Technology Hollywood (https://www.withollywood.org)

Mountain View, Ca, Us

Leading worldwide user experience, visual, prototyping, and content strategy teams for some of the most used features in Google Search. Supporting billions of users and queries in search and GenAI experiences across Sports, Weather, Health, TV, Movies, Music, Stocks, Video Games, Recipes, Dictionary, Translation, and more. Member of Search Generative AI UX Leadership Team.

Burbank, Ca, Us

Head of DTCI Design, leading the Design, User Experience, and Research teams in charge of some of the biggest app, website, streaming, and subscription products at Disney, including Disney.com, ESPN, DisneyNOW, ABC, ESPN Fantasy, ABC News, Marvel, National Geographic, and more. Created the DTCI Cross Brand Design team to create design systems and experience pattern libraries to support all common UI and UX patterns across the portfolio.Founder and continued executive sponsor of the annual Disney Product Design & UX Summit, where all designers, UXers, and researchers from across the entire company gather for two days each year to share and discuss design at Disney.Managing a diverse team of UI product designers, UX interaction designers, motion designers, production designers, ux engineers/prototypers, and ux researchers in multiple worldwide locations.Executive sponsor of our team Diversity & Inclusion Working Group. Supporting multiple diverse mentees across the company.

Burbank, Ca, Us

Leading a team integrating visual design, interaction design, motion design, design development, and innovation across Disney/ABC Television’s portfolio of multi-platform products.Driving the design team and partners across the organization to drive a product roadmap incorporating new non-linear, mobile, direct-to-consumer and cloud products across SVOD, AVOD, DTC, FAST, and related businesses.

Redmond, Washington, Us

Managed and directed the interaction, visual, and motion design teams for the Xbox One console and the Xbox Mobile/Tablet/PC apps across multiple platforms.Continued role on the Microsoft User Experience Leadership Team (UXLT).

Redmond, Washington, Us

Led the visual and motion design teams for Xbox software products, including the Xbox One console launch, Xbox 360 console, Xbox SmartGlass apps, and more.Maintained stellar record for team stability, morale, collaboration, and quality of work output throughout a huge V1 product launch cycle.Appointed to the cross Microsoft User Experience Leadership Team (UXLT).

Redmond, Washington, Us

Shipped Kinect for Xbox 360 v1.0; co-led design work of Kinect Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE) and Xbox Live feature set. Recognized organization leader in OOBE thinking.Drove design work, in partnership with Interaction Design Lead, for Xbox 360 2011 Holiday release. Work was one of the most critically acclaimed releases in Xbox history.Managed work of teams of designers, developers, program managers, researchers, and business leaders to create epic user experiences and award winning products that drove customer and financial results.Responsible for multi-million dollar budgets and partner engagement. Managed and mentored leads and individual contributors.

Redmond, Washington, Us

Design Leadership: Spent significant cycles in the trenches with design organization guiding scenarios, wireframing, interaction specs, product designs, and usability. Drove Product Development team to integrate new technology where best for the user experience. Recognized as the Design leader on the Product Development team.Management & Leadership: Managed work of internal teams in Redmond, Hyderabad, Tokyo, and Dublin, as well as external vendors. Teams owned several Client and Services products, including Encarta.com, Microsoft Student/Encarta, and Encarta Instant Answers. Guided teams through multiple reorgs and VP changes with zero attrition.Incubation & Planning: Led Education Workstyle Initiative to analyze needs in education. Partnered with MSR. Defined short/long term project vision and drove buyoff from VP levels. Spun up several resulting incubation and V1 projects.Process Leadership: Reworked development process into quarterly releases with SCRUM-style execution. Improved integration of Design, UA, and UR into product development processes. Developed new spec templates and process to meet shifting team needs. Built and evangelized schedules, milestones, feature lists, and exit criteria.

Redmond, Washington, Us

Creativity & Execution: Co-conceived of and developed the Encarta Answers project, in partnership with Dev Manager, using existing Encarta content in new ways that were more relevant in a search-oriented market. Successfully convinced MSN Search team to incorporate project into release plans and marketing strategy, eventually making Encarta Answers a cornerstone of MSN Search V1 launch. Also integrated our Encarta Answers technology and data into the Encartabot chatbot and collaborated on NLP/NLQ tech transfer from Microsoft Research.Cross Team Collaboration: Managed the Encarta/MSN Search partnership, the first major partnership between these two teams. Project was scaled up to millions of answers, and architecture was used as foundation for broader Answers project. Received the MSN Leadership Award from Yusuf Medhi for my work on this project. One of a few external team members to receive an MSN Search Ship It Award for my work on their first release. Management: Managed team of full time PMs as well as contingent staff working on Encarta.com and Encarta Answers. Drove work of Localization PMs on international teams in Tokyo and Dublin.Process: Determined and drove milestone schedules and milestone feature lists, working together with Product Development and Business leads. Integrated user data learnings into feature list creation process.

Redmond, Washington, Us

Created the SEO system used by Encarta.com to drive traffic through search engines. Educated Product Development and Marketing teams on SEO best practices. Co-founded the cross Microsoft SEO vteam.Created and owned feature specifications for various user experience projects including search results, content experience, online subscriptions, etc.

Bellevue, Washington, Us

Responsible for driving user experience feature initiatives for online shopping experience, promotions system, search, Pharmacy, and internal tools. Gathered requirements from business parties, developed functional specifications, designed UI elements based on determined objectives, defined technical architecture in collaboration with Dev and Test, scheduled projects, and drove to completion. Shipped features on a monthly release cycle.Developed and drove drugstore.com's SEO platform and practices, leading to twofold increase in traffic and conversion, dramatically reducing customer acquisition costs. Started and managed SEO SWAT team.Developed and helped grow drugstore.com's Affiliate Program.Became recognized company leader in SEO, Affiliate Marketing, and Search.

Bachelor Of Science, Industrial Engineering (Additional Studies In Economics)

Education record