IZEL MARAS
Information
Resume
Linkedin
Read.cv

Lead Product Designer 
Chime
2024 - Current

Head of Design 
Roon
2021 - 2024

Lead Designer
Verizon
2016 - 2020

Visual Designer
frog Design
2014 - 2016

AIGA Mentor

Tech Crit Advisor at 
Cornell Tech

Brooklyn 


Arun Ranganathan 
CTO and Co-Founder
Roon
arun@roon.care

To Whom It May Concern,

I am writing to recommend Izel Maras for the position of Senior Designer at your organization. Over the past two and a half years, I have had the distinct pleasure of working closely with Izel at Roon (a property of CareSpace Health, Inc.), where she has consistently demonstrated a remarkable work ethic, and an unparalleled ability to transform ideas into compelling visual prototypes. Izel directly touched the design of our iOS app (look for "Roon — Answers From Doctors" on the Apple app store), our website (see roon.com), and various other pieces of design that we used as company assets.

Izel's ability to work swiftly and efficiently has been a significant asset to our team. Her knack for quickly turning abstract concepts into tangible designs has been instrumental in our development process. She is both creative and technical, a combination that sets her apart in the field of design. Izel's proficiency in collaborating with front-end engineers has streamlined our workflow, ensuring that our designs are not only aesthetically pleasing but also practical and feasible to implement.

One of Izel's most notable contributions to our company was her role in helping us grow from "zero to one." This phase is often regarded as the most challenging part of building a company, and Izel's dedication, creativity, and technical prowess were critical to our success. Her ability to understand the core requirements of our projects and translate them into effective design solutions played a key role in our company's growth and development.

Izel's work ethic is exemplary. She consistently goes above and beyond to ensure that her work meets the highest standards, and was willing to jump in to other areas beyond design. Her attention to detail and commitment to excellence are evident in every project she undertakes. Furthermore, Izel is a team player who always strives to support her colleagues and contribute positively to the work environment.

I am confident that she will bring the same level of dedication and excellence to your organization as she has to ours.

Please feel free to contact me at arun@roon.care if you require any further information.


CEO and Co-Founder
Roon
vikram@roon.care

To Whomever it may Concern,

I am writing to highly recommend Izel Maras for a senior designer role. I have had the privilege of working closely with Izel at Roon over the last two and half years, during which time I have observed her exceptional skills, leadership, and creativity firsthand.

Izel was our first design hire at Roon and led our design function as we scaled our product and offering. Izel helped us design and build our MVP product (a web application) and our second version of the product based on our MVP learnings (a medical Q&A app) on web and mobile. Our app is used by tens of thousands of people and is beloved by both doctors as well as patients/caregivers. While it is hard to attribute our success to any one thing, Izel’s design skills and leadership played a foundational role here.

What stands out most about Izel is her ability to span different design disciplines (core product and feature design, visual design, UX/UI design) in addition to also doing strong work on our design system, our brand system, designing logos and illustrations for us as well as marketing assets and presentations. Izel has deep empathy for the people she designs for (in our case people navigating complex health conditions) and builds everything putting our user needs at the center.

In addition to her craft, she works with integrity, has an extremely strong work ethic, collaborates well with engineers and product as well as a variety of complex stakeholders. She is always pushing herself to learn new tools and improve her craft (of note she went deep on all the latest AI and design applications and brought fresh thinking on AI to the company). Her proficiency in various design tools and software, combined with their ability to stay abreast of the latest industry trends, ensures that their work is always cutting-edge and impactful. She also takes feedback really well and doesn't get too attached to the work/is flexible in how she operates.

She is a real asset to any high growth startup that is looking for a generalist designer who spikes in several areas as well as a larger organization with a more mature design function.

I wholeheartedly recommend her for a senior design role at any company.

If you would like to chat through specifics on her role at Roon or on her contributions, feel free to email or call me.


Sincerely,
Vikram Bhaskaran


Nathan Curtis
Design system consultant and EightShapes founder

Izel was fantastic at connecting our central design system team to a large community of mobile designers responsible for an expansive, flagship mobile app. She advocated effectively to interpret and expand design system fundamentals and UI component designs to ensure goodness-of-fit her her app's experiences. In addition, she drove the creation of an "expansion pack" of mobile UI components relevant for her domain, building a second library her community used in concert with the design system's core. I'd welcome the chance to work with Izel on further design system oriented efforts.