Over nearly a decade, I helped transform the Star Tribune’s visual journalism from a legacy print-focused culture into one of the most decorated cross-platform design operations in the industry — seeing a 9x increase in international design awards from 2014-2019. Four years into my time at the Strib, I moved into upper newsroom leadership while shifting focus to guide the newsroom’s digital design and infographics teams through a period of exceptionally high-stakes coverage that included COVID-19, the murder of George Floyd, and presidential and midterm election cycles. From 2019 to 2023, this rigorously edited work led to a 4x increase in international digital design awards while the Star Tribune earned its first-ever World's Best Design finalist nomination in 2023 — repeated again in 2024. Through a decade in the newsroom, I showed the ability to identify, hire and grow high-caliber creative talent in a competitive market. I developed, mentored and elevated designers who shaped our most resonant work, with some eventually moving on to work for top names in news design, agency design and retail design — including The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, Politico, Axios and Target. My role expanded from design craft to organizational strategy, influencing not just how we designed stories, but how we hired, collaborated and grew.