About Me

My story starts like so many others. I moved to New York City from a small, rural town to pursue acting, arriving in a rental car with all my essential worldly possessions and $2000 in my pocket. I had 2 weeks to find a job and an apartment before the money ran out.

I found an apartment in Queens and a job at an internet start-up that changed everything. What began as a way to pay the bills became a passion for user experience that has shaped my career for over two decades.

UX Solopreneur

On September 10, 2001 (the day before 9/11) I founded Shannon Brown Web Design, LLC, a boutique UX design and development agency. I spent 15 years designing digital experiences for clients ranging from small, independent businesses to recognizable brands like NBCUniversal, Pearson Learning, Bloomberg, Equinox Fitness, AOL, and Edelman.

Running my own business taught me that the most powerful design emerges from deeply listening to what people need, and working to exceed their expectations.

Data & Analytics

In 2014, I pivoted into data and analytics, joining Lancet Data Science (later acquired by Teradata). At Teradata, I worked with Fortune 500 companies including Procter & Gamble, eBay, Prudential, McCain Foods, and Centene, designing business intelligence dashboards that transformed complex data into actionable insights.

Driving UX Strategy at Centene

At Centene, a Fortune 20 company and one of the nation's largest healthcare corporations, I built and lead the Analytics Experience Design (AXD) practice — taking raw, complicated data and turning it into products people can actually use.

My work runs the gamut from driving BI strategy, to designing analytics products that reach 60,000 employees and 21,000+ data consumers, to establishing a design system that scales across hundreds of dashboards. In this role, I have:

  • Designed an in-house application that replaced a third-party analytics tool, delivering $80M in cost savings.

  • Deployed an enterprise BI Design System that reduces dashboard development time by 60–75% for 1,800 engineers — later adopted into Centene's enterprise brand assets.

  • Pioneered an AI-accelerated research and prototyping methodology that cuts UX design time by more than half, reducing insight cycle time from weeks to 4 hours.

  • Created a UX Community of Practice and coached team members on UX processes, generating $1.2M in annual cost avoidance by reducing the need for external UX headcount.

  • Established an enterprise-wide UX customer satisfaction framework proving that UX-integrated products achieve 20+ point higher NPS and 8+ point higher CSAT than non-UX products.

Life Design

Here's what I've discovered: the same principles that make great user experiences—empathy, iteration, and human-centered design—can transform entire lives.

That's why I'm developing a coaching program that applies UX strategy and design thinking to life itself. Just as I help organizations design better digital experiences, I'm passionate about helping individuals design lives filled with more joy, purpose, and fulfillment.

Whether I'm designing for Fortune 500 companies or helping someone redesign their career, the approach is the same: start with empathy, embrace experimentation, and trust the process.