Marina Peters

About

Senior Design Operations Program Manager with 6+ years building programs, processes, and rituals that enable design teams to execute with visibility, efficiency, and high creative quality. People-first and systems-thinking leader fluent in strategy and execution—scaling design operations from 0-1, driving change management, onboarding/enablement, capacity planning, tooling/workflow optimization, and knowledge management. Experience partnering across stakeholders (design, marketing, sales, customer success, legal/compliance/IT, and finance) to deliver measurable operational and business impact, including $800k budgets, measurable efficiency gains, and pipeline growth.

Experience

• Sr. Design Operations Manager · Marina Peters Consulting, LLC02-01-2017

  Independent consulting practice provides workflow process development, automation & documentation, project management software configuration, project management, marketing strategy and website design

• Marketing Events Manager · Absorb Software07-01-2024 – 11-01-2025

  Applied the same operational and systems-thinking approach from Design Operations to build a high-performing events function from 0-1, establishing the strategy, infrastructure, and cross-functional partnerships that delivered consistent, repeatable results at scale, driving measurable pipeline growth and brand visibility · Generated $6M+ in total sales pipeline for 2025, including $2M and 250+ MQL’s per flagship event, achieving a 13% closed/won rate and establishing events as a top-performing demand gen channel · Drove end-to-end event strategy across the full event lifecycle from logistics and procurement to on-site execution serving as the central alignment point across Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success to ensure cohesive go-to-market execution · Managed a $1.3M budget with full accountability for vendor strategy, contract negotiation, compliance, and payment operations, partnering with Legal and Finance · Built the events function's knowledge base, standardizing processes in Confluence and developing executive-facing KPI dashboards in Salesforce and Power BI, enabling leadership visibility and positioning the team to scale events

• Design Operations Manager · Absorb Software08-01-2022 – 07-01-2024

  Fast-growing SaaS leader in learning management systems backed by private equity Built a Design Operations function from 0-1 at a fast-growing SaaS company, establishing the systems, rituals, and infrastructure that drove measurable efficiency, visibility, and creative quality across a 30-person Experience Design and Marketing org, managing an $800k budget and leading through influence and relationship-building. · Increased Experience Design team efficiency by building a DesignOps practice from 0-1 and led a 10-week PM platform implementation within first 2 months, driving org-wide adoption through a phased change management plan, live training, documentation and ongoing office hours and achieving 93% team satisfaction rating and 100% adoption · Drove 100% increase in project resourcing visibility through live capacity dashboards, accurate effort estimation, and design sprint cycles, surfacing contractor vs. FTE tradeoff recommendations that were acted on by leadership and facilitating resource decisions · Led development of a brand kit and self-service templates in Canva, reducing routine design requests and freeing an average of 10 design hours per week, enabling designers to focus on higher-impact work including experiential design, website, ebooks, social and executive initiatives · Designed and mapped end-to-end creative project lifecycle process, intake, triage, scoping, stakeholder reviews, and approvals, increasing clarity and reducing roadblocks · Built repeatable onboarding programs and produced brand training courses in the LMS, onboarding 22 designers and marketers and enabling consistent, faster team integration at scale · Established org-wide retrospective cycles and iterative improvement processes, creating a culture of continuous feedback that strengthened team ways of working and drove ongoing operational improvements across initiatives and systems · Managed a $800k budget and built data-driven business cases for tooling investment presented to leadership, securing approvals that expanded team capabilities, overseeing vendor lifecycle in partnership with Legal, Compliance, and IT

• Design Operations Program Manager, Onboarding · CVS Health (via Aquent)05-01-2022 – 07-01-2022

  Contracted to CVS through Aquent for short-term leave coverage. CVS is a Fortune 5 company. Owned accuracy and maintenance of a comprehensive Airtable Design Roster serving as the org-wide source of truth for headcount, open roles, and team assignments across a 450-person CVS Digital design org, while coordinating new colleague onboarding. · Enabled hiring managers by effectively guiding them through hiring and onboarding process for FTE's and contractors with comprehensive documentation, forms and checklists, providing a single source of truth · Continually solicited feedback and refined processes to reduce confusion and improve efficiency · Updated and maintained process documentation and resources in Confluence

• Product Manager & Creative/Design Operations · O’Neal05-01-2008 – 02-01-2017

  O’NEAL USA is a global retail leader in motocross and mountain bike protective apparel and accessories. Led product management and creative/design operations for 4 in-house brands, managing a portfolio of 100+ unique products. Owned end-to-end product development workflows, creative processes, vendor relationships, and regulatory, safety, and quality standards, partnering with international design teams and licensee leadership to manage licensed brand partnerships. · Increased design capacity by over 30% by standardizing design workflows and processes, creating structure that allowed creative teams to focus on high-impact work · Led creation of the first packaging design system, reducing packaging costs by 60% YoY while increasing design capacity and establishing brand consistency across product lines · Led implementation of the first DAM (Digital Asset Management) system, enabling customer self-service for assets and reducing inbound asset requests from customers and sales by 90%

Education

• California State University, NorthridgeB.A., Art, with emphasis in graphic design

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