Yaddy Arroyo

Some people call what I do mentoring, but I just call it “being a super cheerleader for those who need it and deserve it.” I advise founders on UX + accessibility + ai-enablement. I also connect amazing ai-enabled product makers and builders with other creative scientists. 

I cover most verticals except banking (because of potential conflicts of interest with my day job), but my favorite vertical is healthcare biometrics wearables for at home use.

I’ve lost tons of family and friends, and seeing the hospice care made me realize there has got to be a way to help people leave this world with dignity, at home. I’m trying to improve the world. This is my way of giving back to the community.

“AI + UX maker” advisor & super connector

Confidential

At a regional US Bank (aka Conversational AI designer, HCI AI designer, principal VUI designer, multimodal service ai designer, hci designer,  Ai designer, Ai ux service designer, human factors engineer, NLU architect, prompt engineer, Ai model trainer, technical writer, linguistics engineer, business analyst)

High level IC focusing on LLM E2E initiatives 

• 8 multi-modal AI banking patents 
• multiplatform,  multichannel , multimodal designs
• servant leader af

VP / Principal Multimodal Experience Architect

Really bad polymath

My next project will revolve around a zany group of technocratic neo-feudalists who are trying to dismantle democracy in America. A must see. /s

Writer, Indie filmmaker, mix media artist, musician, and aspiring video game designer.

https://m.imdb.com/name/nm5194487/

Creative Writer

Bank of America

• Mobile payments SME for Everyday Banking:
Money matters. And every second counts. The complexity that makes moving money possible requires a simultaneous  MIN/ MAX view of how internal and external systems coexist together in the payments ecosphere

• Design systems contributor, Everyday Banking (Payments) SME

VP / Sr. Product Designer - Enterprise payments (Mobile)

Honest Rogue

Ran my own little service design/ experience architecture agency, working with a ton of small and large and pre-seed to eventually IPO’d/acquired start ups as well as subcontracted with tech shops and consultancy firms.

Roles I've had:
UX Human Factors Engineer
UX Researcher & Strategist
UX Architect
UI Designer
Conversational AI designer & writer
Product owner
Business Analyst


Connected car clients: BMW, Allstate 
Ai social listening: networked insights (acquired by American Family Insurance)
Voice / IVR: West Corporation (Now Intrado)
Health: Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, mHealthCoach
Under NDA: Manufacturing, DoD, Emergency Services


Contract and subcontracting work with Fortune 100 clients on complex, data-heavy transactional experiences that win people’s trust and engagement. Software, telematic, B2B, Fintech, Biotech, Voice/ IoT, AI/machine learning....you name it, I’m down for working on it. 

Key Words: Connected Life, Connected Car / Telematics / OBDII /  HUD, XD architect, UX producer, UX creative director,  Mixed-Reality UX design,  VUI Design, Amazon Lex/Polly/Lambda prototyping, Sayspring prototyping,  Alexa / Google Voice / Google assistant prototyping, Voice Tech, CX Design, System Persona Design, IVR, Chatbots, AI,  Retail POP UX design, CX, UX, HX, User Experience Consulting, UX Architect, Experience Planning,  Wireframes, Information Architecture, UX Operations, Usability Testing Framework development, Project Management UX, Digital Strategy, Social Media Strategy, Content Development, Persona Development, Mobile Strategy, Customer Engagement Analytics,  Product Localization Marketing.

Senior Principal Consultant

Lextech Global Services

Consultancy: Helped create quick, iterative UX designs for cool clients, and interesting concepts across verticals and horizontal product lines.

Sr. Experience Designer

Manifest Digital

• UX Design & Backend Architecture Documentation for Telematics & Connected Life Products
• UX Ideation around New Business R&D products
• UX Design for Financial digital experiences

Sr. Manager, UX Design

The Bravo Group

At Bravo, it was my job to understand the human experience nuances of the US Hispanic market, specifically within the digital realm (online, mobile, offline digital, etc.). I  translated their cultural, experience, and channel-preference nuances into digestible nuggets of information we used to improve their online and offline user experience. 

Since the digital experience plans impacted both real life and virtual life environments, collaboration with creative strategists and other account planners was quintessential for measurable success.

Digital Experience Planner

Discover Financial Services

Project managed several enterprise-wide system and interactive product integrations. I also helped launch new interactive financial utility tools and products. 

Aside from enterprise-wide solutions, I was also accountable for all of ShopDiscover.com operations:  daily and weekly maintenance updates, new partner site integration, "hot deals" maintenance, operations issues, file transfer and data feed issues, infosec compliance, strategy design roadmap, digital strategy, and functionality upgrade redesign work.

Sr. Associate: e-Business

I was the Sr. Associate Interactive Product Manager of Shopdiscover.com.  I handled the tactical implementation of our partnership strategy. A techno-heavy role, where indepth knowledge of legal and security issues was paramount, I worked with multiple stakeholders to launch one of the most successful affiliate programs on Linkshare, Commission Junction and Google Affiliate Networks.

I aided in partnership acquisition and pricing strategy, and the day-to-day management of partnership development and site operations.

Sr. Associate: Partnership Marketing

Principal AI / ML designer (NLU experiences) at Truist

I currently work at a bank as an NLU experience architect/ UX (IC) principal.  I also advise on Ai-enabled wearables within the health ecosystem for “funsies.”

Empathy is not a weakness. It’s a start. It gives us a purview  into Ai UX usecases  we can start from. 


VP /Principal VUI designer (NLU&Emerging)

Topular Strategy

Helping enterprise leaders achieve breakthrough growth inside systems built for incremental results.

Where most firms deliver "innovation workshops," Topular Strategy equips leaders with field-tested methodology that drives real outcomes: launching new business lines, expanding into adjacent markets, and creating category-defining advantages.

The Beyond Incremental Framework develops three leadership capabilities:
People → Natural authority and team acceleration for complex organizations
Performance → Systematic approaches that survive quarterly review processes
Passion → Conviction and story power to sustain momentum through resistance

At the center is Breakthrough Leadership: where you stop optimizing inside constraints and start creating the growth your board demands.

What We Offer

Fractional CTPO → Strategic leadership for high-stakes innovation initiatives and new business line development
Strategic Advisory → Executive partnership for VPs, CPOs, and leaders with breakthrough mandates
90-Day Beyond Incremental Program → Master the framework and apply it to your current mandate

Results I'm Known For:

Guided enterprise teams from incremental output to launching new categories
Created Plum Analytics (category-defining product) → acquired twice
Coached product leaders into VP + C-suite roles across industries

Why Leaders Choose Topular Strategy
They need methodology proven in the field, developed by a founder who has successfully guided teams to deliver breakthrough results inside risk-averse enterprises.

Fractional CTPO | Strategic Advisor for Breakthrough Leadership

Founded and ran a consulting company that helped growth companies execute on their ideas.

Assisted with the successful launch of dozens of startups - many with high scalability, high availability needs.

Core service offerings included:
• Strategic Analysis
• Project Leadership
• Technology Due Diligence

Sample client engagements:
• AccuWeather – Worked with executive management to set product requirements for a new line of business. Formed and led an outsourced product development team.
• LinkStorm – Interim CTO during the transformation from publishing-facing business model to an advertising platform. Brought in a team to rearchitect.
• Lucky Litter – Re-architected ecommerce system and order processing for a direct-to-consumer ecommerce company. (Acquired by Radio Systems Corporation.)
• Essembly / Facebook Causes – Provided technical oversight, mentoring, and project management to an entrepreneurial team of college-aged developers to get them to their public release. Technology became the basis of the Facebook app platform.
• TNS Media Intelligence – Performed technical due diligence for potential acquisition targets.
• High Beam Research - Created an 18-month technology plan that streamlined and simplified the existing architecture for both their eCommerce platform and search engine. (Acquired by Cengage Learning)
• National Philanthropic Trust - Built and licensed a toolset for automatically creating aggregated topic-based news feeds.
• Living Independently - Interim CTO for healthcare startup including technology team recruitment and leadership, product development, and vendor management. Progressed from concept to functional prototype in one month. Throughout the one-year engagement delivered an end-to-end consumer solution. (Acquired by GE Healthcare)
• RippleTech - Assisted the executive management team with technology strategies for launching the company’s second product line. Mentored CTO throughout a business-critical project re-architecture project.

Founder and President

Elsevier

Elsevier acquired Plum Analytics, the company I co-founded, in 2017.  My role at Elsevier was to lead research metrics product management. Working with the global teams, innovative metrics from Plum Analytics were successfully integrated across the suite of Elsevier products including Scopus, Science Direct, Mendeley, and Pure.

VP of Research Metrics, Product Management and Managing Director of Plum Analytics

EBSCO Information Services

EBSCO acquired Plum Analytics in 2017, and I served as the president of Plum Analytics. PlumX, the flagship product, was an analysis tool that measured the online impact of scholarly research. At EBSCO, this tool was sold globally into academic libraries, governmental agencies, funders, and commercial companies.

Responsible for all aspects of the Plum Analytics business unit: sales, marketing, business development, engineering, product management, and customer service. Integrated with shared services inside of the parent company for economies of scale.

President, Plum Analytics

Plum Analytics

Plum Analytics is the provider of PlumX™, a product that delivers a more complete picture of research and answers questions about research impact for anyone including researchers, librarians, administrators, and funders. PlumX, was named Library Journal’s most ambitious database in 2013.

Co-Founder and President

Fast PDF

Started as itch/scratch-ware, Fast PDF progressed from a side-project done with a friend, to a solid example of how a simple web application that solves an unmet need can thrive on the web. We converted over 1M documents. Eventually, I sold the company to my cofounder in exchange for half of the cash in the bank, and a lifetime of sushi lunches.

Co-Founder

Serials Solutions

Led the technology behind Summon, a research search engine for libraries, from inception through to 250+ customers internationally.

Built and led an agile, international team of developers to architect a large scale content ingestion system and highly performant search engine for > 3/4 billion scholarly documents.

Summon won the 2011 CODiE Award for Best Enterprise Search Solution by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). 

More about Summon:

The Summon™ unified discovery service allows the researcher to quickly search, discover and access reliable and credible library content. It goes beyond federated search, beyond next-generation catalogs to create an all-new service for libraries. Through one simple search, it provides instant access to the breadth of authoritative content that's the hallmark of great libraries - digital and print, audio and video, single articles to entire e-journals, and every format in between.

Director of Technology, Discovery Services

ProQuest

(ProQuest and SerialsSolutions are listed separately in LinkedIn - so adding a second entry here.  See description above.)

Unit of 1

When first starting out as a consultant, Andrea founded Unit of 1, a networking group that helps (very) small business owners run more effective companies.  The group organically grew to over 500 consultants.

Managing Director

1-800-CTO

Consulted as an interim Chief Technology Officer to startups.  Expertise in project management, systems architecture, and technology team leadership.

Sample client engagements include:
• Health Market Science - Fulfilled interim CTO role to write technology plan, revamp business plan, and assist in due diligence meetings with venture capitalists.
• Idealab – Worked with team working through early business planning / prototyping of a new search product.
• Performed due diligence for angel investors.

Technology Management Consultant

EchoFactor.com

A content service provider of news feeds on thousands of topics.  Every day EchoFactor uncovered 50,000 new headlines from 2,000 quality sources.  The patented technology behind EchoFactor uses metadata extraction techniques to automatically reorganize the web by topic.

• Defined and managed an aggressive product release schedule.  Led seed team from idea to functional prototype in 5 weeks, launched public beta 8 weeks later, and hit scheduled release dates every 4-6 weeks thereafter.
• Built a fault-tolerant, horizontally scalable intelligent-agent system with a hardware budget of less than $35,000
• Maintained full P&L responsibility, including all budgeting, forecasting, capital expenditures, and headcount allocation.
• Secured $500K in seed funding.  Presented the business plan to over a dozen venture capital firms.  Secured a term sheet for $1.5 million in Series A funding.

Co-Founder and Chief Technologist

Enterprise leaders live in a trap.
Systems that reward predictability while demanding moonshots.

I escaped that trap while creating a new category in risk-averse academic publishing.

Most leaders play by the rules.
They ship features. Improve metrics. Hope incremental wins somehow add up to breakthroughs.

They don't.

After founding Plum Analytics (acquired twice: EBSCO, then Elsevier) and serving as VP at a global enterprise, I learned the truth:
Breakthrough growth requires an entirely different methodology.

The problem isn't you.
It's the environment that rewards predictability over possibility.

That's why I built the Beyond Incremental Methodology.
For enterprise leaders chasing breakthrough growth inside complex, risk-averse environments.

At its core is my People + Passion + Performance Framework:

People → Build cross-functional influence that gives you authority without a title

Passion → Sustain conviction + narratives that push through resistance

Performance → Design systematic approaches for breakthroughs inside enterprise constraints

Leaders who master this don't just ship features.
They launch new business lines, expand into adjacent markets, and create advantages that competitors spend years replicating.

My background:

• Serial entrepreneur, 2 exits including Plum Analytics (category creation)
• VP Research Metrics at Elsevier (global enterprise leadership)
• Author of upcoming book Beyond Incremental: Breakthrough Development for Enterprise Leaders

I work with enterprise leaders who:
• Have mandates for breakthrough growth
• Need systematic approaches for new market development
• Want proven methodology for category creation with enterprise stakeholders

Ways to work with me:
• Newsletter → Weekly insights for enterprise leaders chasing breakthrough growth
• Methodology Course → Complete People + Passion + Performance framework
• 90-Day Program → Apply breakthrough development to your specific growth mandate
• Strategic Consulting → Direct support on breakthrough product initiatives

If you need breakthrough growth results but can't "move fast and break things..."
Let’s talk about approaches that actually work in your environment.

taplio

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Yaddy Arroyo

Andrea Michalek

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