Michael Kopcsak
AI-Native Product, Design & Research Leader
Professional Summary
AI-focused design and product executive with 20+ years shaping consumer, small business and enterprise products across global commerce, fintech, networking and other complex domains. I move comfortably between consumer and enterprise platforms, and between hands-on product work and executive-level influence. At Walmart International, I delivered two major AI initiatives: Carrito Listo, a zero-to-one auto-shopping agent that drove grocery revenue, and Trend to Product, an agentic workflow that accelerated fashion design. Throughout my career, I have built multidisciplinary organizations, aligned senior leaders around measurable product strategies, and translated emerging technology into useful, scalable experiences.
Work Experience
VP, Product Experience Design | Gap, Inc.
02/2026 – 08/2026
- Built the business case for capitalizing design work, identifying $3M in savings.
- Defined enterprise-wide product and experience strategy, partnering with Product, Engineering, Data Science and Analytics leadership to align design direction with measurable business outcomes (adoption, usage, conversion, time to resolution).
- Established scalable operating models, governance frameworks and measurement systems, including design and product KPIs spanning usability, task completion and accessibility, improving organizational maturity and cross-functional alignment.
- Led a shared design system with brand theming, so Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic and Athleta each kept their own identity on common patterns.
- Delivered the latest version of the employee intranet.
Group Director, Head of Product Design & Research | Walmart International
06/2022 – 08/2025
- Owned product strategy and experience vision for a global, multi-brand eCommerce and enterprise portfolio spanning 20+ international markets, translating customer insight into evidence-based roadmaps and delivering 8+ large-scale product launches in 3 years alongside a 16% increase in eCommerce revenue.
- Built and scaled a 24-person global UX Research organization (a 300% capacity increase), embedding customer evidence into roadmap planning, prioritization and executive decision-making, shifting research from a downstream check to an upstream strategic input.
- Established scalable operating practices, design governance and research-driven decision-making frameworks that improved execution quality and reduced ambiguity across Product and Engineering.
- Built and led a global Product Design organization (design, research, accessibility, localization, ops) supporting high-growth, cross-market platforms, improving employee engagement 9% and retention 12%.
- Delivered Carrito Listo, a consumer agentic shopping experience for the South American market, taking it from concept to operational in live stores in less than 6 months.
- Delivered Trend to Product, an AI-native fashion design paradigm that shortened fashion design delivery from a year to four months across 20 markets.
Sr. Director / Head of UX, Design, Content & Research | Equinix, Inc.
11/2020 – 06/2022
- Partnered with Product, Data Science, Marketing and Engineering to develop and execute the product roadmap for Equinix's global data center and interconnection platform, embedding customer discovery into planning and prioritization.
- Established UX Research, Content Design and Design Systems as strategic organizational capabilities, taking research from zero to full product coverage in one year through direct engagement with network and data center professionals.
- Made the business case for and scaled Quix, an enterprise design system and governance model that unified multiple product organizations, increased design consistency 60%, cut QA time 40% and saved $1.5M in six months.
- Mentored cross-functional team members and embedded a culture of accountability and continuous learning through regular reviews and direct customer engagement.
- Recognized with Equinix's Golden Fortress Award for the delivery of an enterprise-wide design system through cross-functional teamwork.
Sr. Director, UX Design & Research, Enterprise Networks | Cisco Systems
12/2016 – 11/2020
- Led design and research for Cisco DNA Center, a mission-critical network operations and security platform used to manage, secure and automate the world's largest enterprise networks.
- Led a cross-functional team of 78+ product managers, designers and researchers, driving adoption of discovery and design-thinking practices that cut project delivery time 24% and aligned engineering, UX and product around shared strategic goals.
- Led end-to-end product strategy for Cisco DNA Center, redesigning highly technical, data-dense workflows into intuitive experiences that reduced time-to-value 90% and improved adoption and operational efficiency.
- Delivered Cohesion, an end-to-end design system that saved $4M in year one by cutting redundant design and engineering work and reducing UI development time 55%.
- Presented product strategy and business impact to senior executives and cross-functional partners, building alignment through data-backed narratives.
Director, Product Management, UX Design & Research, MyVMware.com | VMware
05/2012 – 12/2016
- Held full ownership of the product and support experience for MyVMware.com, a B2B self-service portal covering account management, licensing, subscriptions and customer support, partnering directly with Sales and Customer Success and reporting outcomes to business leadership.
- Built self-service capabilities that reduced support dependency, improved resource productivity 20%, cut operating costs $5M a year and drove a 34-point CSAT improvement within 12 months.
- Led a cross-functional team of product managers, CX strategists, researchers and interaction designers while sustaining an 80+ employee pulse-score culture.
- Developed a business-unit-wide design and component governance model to scale consistency across the product line.
Skills & Competencies
Leadership
- Global Organization Leadership
- Executive Stakeholder Management
- Organizational Design
- Cross-Functional / Matrixed Leadership
- Talent Coaching & Development
- OKRs / Business Metrics Delivery
Product Strategy
- Consumer Product Strategy
- Subscription & Growth Experiences
- AI Product Design
- Product Vision
Design Excellence
- AI-Native Design Practices
- Systems Thinking
- Design Systems
- Design Quality
- UX Strategy
- Design Operations
Customer Experience Excellence
- Qualitative Research
- Quantitative Research
- Experimentation
- Accessibility
- Localization
Education
- MPS, Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) | New York University
- BA, Art, minor in Business Management | Guilford College
Certifications
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) | Scrum Alliance (lapsed)
Awards & Scholarships
- Golden Fortress Award | Equinix
- Together We Win | VMware
- Stanley Frank Fellow | Guilford College
Volunteering & Leadership
Trustee (elected), Lakeside Joint School District Board | Los Gatos, CA | 2015 to 2019
Elected by my community to serve on a public school board. It was an honor to serve.