Elly Hizon · Portfolio

THE STORY SO FAR

I've lived many lives.
All of them useful.

I started in editorial and web design, taught myself code in the early 2000s, and ran a Xenogears fan site that somehow became a Webby Awards finalist. What looked like a winding path was actually building something rare: a genuinely cross-disciplinary foundation spanning UX design, front-end engineering, and product management.

That foundation has taken me across Oracle Aconex, HardHat, and now NAB, one of Australia's Big Four banks, where I'm a Principal Product Designer leading AI design infrastructure, Digital Wallets, Financial Wellbeing, and Credit Card Servicing. I don't just sit at the design table. I shape how design operates as a strategic function, using AI tooling to accelerate teams and build systems that scale.

Off the clock, I draw comics, paint digital illustrations, write fiction, and lose hours to Souls games. I'm a certified movie nerd and chronic fandom tracker. Ask me when there's a new season, a hot take, or a weird product launch and I've probably already clocked it. I share my home office with Quincy, a Russian Blue who supervises my work from a distance and has strong opinions about my monitor placement. The throughline across all of it: design thinking disguised as play.

What I bring to the table

Cross-Functional Leadership

Dual-certified in CSPO and SAFe 5. I partner with Product and Engineering at the executive level to shape roadmaps, govern portfolios, and align cross-functional teams around a unified design vision.

Outcome Engineering

Doubled organic conversion rates in under 2 months. 27.8% organic feature adoption at scale. I establish the measurement frameworks that tie design decisions directly to business outcomes.

Data-Backed Storytelling

Product Experience Canvases, executive comms, stakeholder alignment decks. I translate complex systems and ambiguous problems into strategies that move organisations forward.

AI Design Infrastructure

I architect and deploy AI toolchains across design organisations — Cursor, Claude, MCP integrations — building internal systems that accelerate delivery and reduce engineering handoff friction.

CX and UX Strategy

Service design, research, and systems thinking across B2C and B2B. From ethnographic field research to shipped fintech at scale in highly regulated environments.

Design Operations

I build the cultural and technical infrastructure that enables high-performing design teams — scalable design systems, chapter-wide enablement programs, and the operational foundations that protect quality at speed.

Stakeholder Influence

Engineering, Product, Executives. I build alignment across complex organisations using visual narratives and strategic framing that make the path forward obvious and the decision easy.

Creative Direction

Illustration, digital art, editorial instincts. A genuine point of view on craft that shows up in every pixel and every system I build.

Selected work

↗

NAB · AI SYSTEM · DESIGN OPERATIONS

Intelligence Hub

How I built NAB's first centralised AI platform from scratch in five days, scaling it organically to serve 800+ product professionals across a major domain in the enterprise.

800+

Users across PB division

↗

NAB · LIVE PRODUCT · LEADERSHIP

Financial Wellbeing

An ecosystem of intelligent money management tools inside NAB Mobile, giving Australians personalised insights to understand, plan, and improve their financial health.

Live

NAB Mobile · App Store now

↗

Oracle Aconex · Field Research · UX Design

Aconex Punchlists

To design a better experience for site supervisors, I went to an actual Multiplex construction site and witnessed a day in their life firsthand.

On-site

Ethnographic field research

Kudos

"Elly is not only a skilled designer but also a great leader within the business. Her ability to combine design, innovation and relationship building is what sets her apart and allows her to deliver great outcomes for businesses and customers."

Christina Zsori

Principal Product Designer · NAB

"Elly brought a strong sense of leadership, care, and craft to everything she did. Her design craft is excellent — she still found ways to elevate work that was close to completion. Beyond delivery, she contributes a lot to team culture. I'd highly recommend Elly to any team looking for a strong design leader who combines high-quality craft with genuine care for the people around her."

Ash Patel

Senior Product Designer · NAB

"She brings a great mix of creativity and strategic thinking, with a real talent for turning complex ideas into clear, compelling narratives. With a background across both product management and product design, Elly naturally connects strategy, user needs, and execution. She's collaborative, thoughtful, and a genuinely positive presence."

Steve Saul

Senior Product Manager · Aconex

"Elly has an exceptional ability to understand complex problems and translate them into clear, strategic design solutions. She's particularly strong at creating scalable, reusable components and is a fantastic storyteller who brings stakeholders along the journey. She consistently goes above and beyond to support the team and the wider organisation."

Shruti Thakor

Designer · NAB

"Elly played a key role in building and hiring an offshore team in the Philippines and worked across multiple teams including UX/UI and development to take products from concept through to delivery. She is a talented team player and a new product visionary, along with being a talented manager of all that is existing. Unquestionably one of the best I've worked with."

Duncan Walton

IT Director

"Elly is a talented and cutting edge product development professional. She has a best in class concept design plus UI/UX skill set in addition to strong creative and analytical capabilities. She works seamlessly with her reporting team of product managers including her development colleagues. She is a new product visionary along with being a talented manager of all that is existing. Unquestionably one of the best I've worked with."

John Leahy

Head of Global Marketing · Berlitz Corporation

"Elly brought skill sets and capabilities that far exceeded what was required of her. Her knowledge of user experience and web content management optimised and completely transformed our online product offering, whilst her project management skills introduced a functional system that allowed us to achieve project objectives. I would recommend her to any employer looking to raise their online product management to the next level."

Jasmina Majdis (Dugalic)

Senior Marketing Specialist

"Elly was consistently reliable and able to manage our team to meet deadlines and exceed expectations. She never ran out of ideas on how to improve the business process, and was able to build a solid working relationship with the client. She was approachable when issues needed to be discussed, which made everything easier for all involved."

Roland Gilbert Matanza

Knowledge Management Specialist · American Express

Hi, I'm Elly.
I turn organisational complexity into things that actually ship.

I've lived many lives.
All of them useful.

What I bring to the table