About Ethan
Ethan Perry is a Director of User Experience with over a decade of leadership experience in enterprise SaaS, AI-enhanced applications, and collaboration software. He has led global UX organizations of 30+ employees, translating business strategy into design objectives and delivering differentiated user experiences. Ethan specializes in creating agile, high-performing design teams that embed UX into the product lifecycle and drive measurable business impact.
Ethan has held leadership roles at IBM and Duck Creek Technologies, where he guided teams through product discovery, design system implementation, accessibility initiatives, and usage analytics adoption. He has partnered with executives and cross-functional stakeholders to envision and deliver AI-enabled capabilities, improving customer efficiency and trust. His career began at consultancies including Studio Archetype and Razorfish, and he later earned a Master’s degree at the MIT Media Lab, conducting research on online collaboration and information visualization.
Beyond his professional work, Ethan is a lifelong musician. He plays piano in a jazz ensemble, keyboards in an acoustic rock band, and composes electronic music. He brings the same spirit of collaboration and improvisation from music into his leadership approach, fostering inclusive, innovative cultures.
Ethan lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two teenage sons, and is an avid Boston Celtics fan.
My Story
I thrive on building high-performing, cross-disciplinary teams and translating business objectives into user experience outcomes. My career has focused on defining compelling UX vision, creating structures that enable collaboration, and cultivating inclusive cultures that drive results.
I began my career in digital media at Studio Archetype and Razorfish, where I worked as an information architect, prototyper, and interaction designer. These early experiences taught me how diverse design teams collaborate and sparked my interest in organizational effectiveness. To deepen my perspective, I studied business and systems thinking texts such as The Fifth Discipline and Crossing the Chasm.
At the MIT Media Lab, I explored online collaboration and information visualization as part of the Sociable Media Group. That research foundation led me to IBM, where I advanced from product designer to design lead for IBM Connections, a market-leading enterprise social software platform. In this role, I grew and managed a distributed design team, secured executive buy-in for product vision, and delivered consistent UX across a portfolio of enterprise tools.
After more than a decade at IBM, I joined Duck Creek Technologies, an insuretech company, where I now serve as Director of UX. I lead a global team of 30+ across design, research, and technical communications. My focus has been embedding UX into agile delivery, scaling our design system, improving accessibility, and introducing analytics-driven decision making. Most recently, I’ve partnered with product leadership to explore how generative and agentic AI can transform insurance configuration and business workflows, helping customers gain efficiency and stay competitive.
Throughout my career, I’ve been drawn to emerging technologies and the ways they reshape how people connect and create. Outside of work, I pursue that passion through music — playing piano in a jazz ensemble, keyboards in an acoustic rock band, and composing electronic music in my home studio. Music has reinforced my belief in the power of collaboration and improvisation, qualities I bring into every design team I lead.