Wai dela Cruz

Director of UX & Product Design

Design leader with 22 years in UX and 10 years in leadership, building scalable design systems and AI-powered experiences that deliver measurable revenue, adoption, and efficiency gains across Fortune 500 enterprises.

Case Studies

Car Finder

Median Care

Healthcare

An at-Home self-monitoring tool for infectious disease symptoms
Wai Reyes Photography

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices

Real Estate

Elevating the agent experience with a seamless, consolidated platform
Where Locals Eat

Where Locals Eat

Travel, E-Commerce

Innovation development for a new business entity exploring travel dining experiences
NADA

NADAGuides

Automotive, E-Commerce

Transforming revenue model while elevating user experience
Travel Bug

Travel Bug

Travel

Bridging digital travel convenience with human expertise
ProEdge

ProEdge Design System

Education, Technology

Transforming product development through design operations leadership
Shop Mate

Shop Mate

E-Commerce

Reinventing the in-store shopping experience
Resume App

Resume App

Computer Technology

Zero-to-one product development for Oracle Consulting to boost consultant marketability
Car Finder

Car Finder

Automotive, E-Commerce

Reimagining vehicle discovery for early-stage buyers

Innovation Approach

Understand industry & competitive landscape

Preserve brand value through continuous product differentiation and stay up to date with trends in creating opportunities in the market space

Uphold design culture that is people focused

Foster creative confidence and instill the mindset of human-centeredness at both team and organizational level

Ideate, test, measure, repeat

Cultivate evidence-based design process that is collaborative, iterative, measurable, and results-driven

Advocate for systematic thinking & scalable design

Promote holistic approach to problem solving and champion use of patterns and reusable components

About

Education
MFA, Interactive Design, SCAD
MA, Design Management, SCAD
BA, Development Studies, DLSU
GC, UX & Customer-Centered Design, CSUF


Notable Experience

PwC
Creative Director, UX | 2021-2024

Oracle
Experience Design Lead | 2019-2021

J.D. Power
Lead UI/UX Designer | 2018-2019

View complete experience >


Certifications
PwC Human-Centered Design • PwC Generative AI for Design • PwC Inclusive Mindset and Design • Oracle Cloud Infrastructure


Key Achievements
Business Growth
$35M in revenue from strategic design workshops (Oracle)

Operational Efficiency
50% faster design delivery (PwC ProEdge)
50% efficiency improvement (Oracle)

User Impact
+80% vehicle search usability (J.D. Power)
+40% adoption growth (Oracle)
AI personalization (PwC ProEdge)

Team Leadership
10+ designers managed and mentored


Industry Experience
Technology • Financial Services • Healthcare • Travel • Government • Automotive • E-Commerce • Real Estate • Logistics • Education • Entertainment


Kind words

Design Leaderhip & Operations Management

Wai is a fantastic leader who has been pivotal in establishing and maturing the ProEdge product. Wai tackled inefficiencies and inconsistencies by launching the Design Acceleration initiative, which aligned with our goals of efficiency, consistency, and accessibility. Wai is great with people, she cares and is passionate about her work. She invested her time across different practice areas to gain consensus and manage change. This leadership reduced design to delivery turnaround time by accelerated product development, and ensured brand consistency across all user touchpoints. Wai's commitment to accessibility has made ProEdge inclusive and compliant with standards.

Sheree K
Practice Lead, PwC

Service Design

Wai brought her expertise in service design to the engagement both directly by applying her knowledge in building client deliverables, and indirectly by educating other team members in understanding the framework of service design and application to client needs. The client was very happy with the outcomes of the engagement, and the ability of the PwC team to provide the specialized skills and capabilities that they were exactly looking for. Wai helped us build a strong client relationship that resulted in additional work opportunities in 2022.

Tom L
Engagement Leader, PwC

Design Leadership

Wai dela Cruz spent countless hours with the BHHS team understanding their requirements and taking them through her signature design workshops.

The outcome of this massive Oracle collaboration was an agreement for a $4.5M in NAC Consulting Services and $3.9M for Apps Consulting, totaling $35M in TCV.

Aaron M
SVP, Strategic Services & Partners, Oracle

UX Design

Wai produced design concepts that really pleased our leadership and the program team. It was encouraging to see how quickly and with quality she rendered these for us and the “art of the possible” as we move forward to build this mission critical solution for our agents, employees, and customers. We really appreciate her work and are looking forward for more great things to come as she helps us with our UX designs and plans.

Rob B
Program Manager, Berkshire Hathaway HSOA

Cross-Functional Team Leadership

Wai is a leader. She is highly skilled in all that is UX and UI, she is strong, she is diligent. Gracious with her time, Wai was always willing to teach me what it takes to put the user first. Committed and creative, her designs are calculated and clear, her research helped identify problems, for which she always had solutions for. Experienced in Agile, Wai also played a mentoring role in our team's transition to Scrum, helping the team achieve maximum efficiency. Best of all, she is a spark-plug of energy and just a fun person to be around, I hope our paths will cross again soon.

Jonathan B
Software Engineer, J.D. Power