The Reset

Southwest's first-ever RIF, in February 2025, rearranged the org chart under me. It turned out to be the best thing that could have happened.

I landed on a new team, Digital Design and Research, under a director focused specifically on design. I made the case plainly: our process had become slow and entirely manual, and we'd been forced to scale the system without any real support to document or onboard people efficiently. She listened.

That's what finally got me room to evaluate real tools instead of patching around the gap.