Guiding Financial Services Professionals Towards Success—MDRT
The Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) is the premier global association for leading financial services professionals, such as insurance agents and financial advisors. With over 72,000 members across 69 countries, MDRT recognizes individuals who demonstrate exceptional professional knowledge, ethical conduct, and client service. Membership offers access to a highly engaged global community, world-class educational resources, and leadership development opportunities designed to help members advance their careers and stay at the forefront of the financial industry.
The MDRT Academy is a separate association within MDRT that is designed for financial professionals who are working toward full MDRT qualification. It provides developing advisors with targeted resources to build technical skills, sustainable business practices, and strong personal foundations in work-life balance, resilience, and long-term client success. A key part of the Academy’s approach is its content-rich learning experience, organized into structured pathways with a wide variety of formats — including critical mindset frameworks, short-form "snackable" tips, in-depth articles, videos, and podcasts. The diversity and intentional structuring of content supports members at different stages of learning, allowing them to engage with material flexibly while building confidence and professional habits.
The challenge.
MDRT was seeking to expand the way it served both current members and aspiring members through mobile and digital experiences. The goal was to build…
A Member App that offered full members access to MDRT’s community, thought leadership, and professional resources directly from their mobile devices:
An Academy Platform (mobile + web) to support newer financial professionals as they worked toward MDRT qualification, helping them build key skills, track habits, and engage with mentors:
My contributions.
Conducting research with members during one of MDRT’s conferences.
For over 7 years, I worked with MDRT as part of Eight Bit Studios, where we served as the full product team for two key digital experiences: the MDRT Member App and the MDRT Academy mobile and web apps. In my role as Director of Experience Design I led our XD team in experience strategy, user research, product design, and ongoing iteration, collaborating closely with MDRT’s leadership, technology, and content teams.
Throughout both projects I contributed to and led multiple aspects of the design process, including:
Facilitating workshops with stakeholders to align on user needs and strategic objectives.
Conducting interviews and research with financial professionals to understand key workflows, motivators, and challenges.
Defining product roadmaps and feature sets aligned to MDRT’s community-building and professional growth goals.
Creating design frameworks for the team such as Learn-Practice-Measure, a structure that helped us engage and guide learners over years of personal development.
Leading the design of personalized content delivery, integrating machine learning-driven recommendations to surface relevant materials.
Designing community and networking features that enabled member-to-member communication, group learning, and goal sharing.
Collaborating on cross-platform design to ensure seamless experiences between mobile and web.
Providing in-depth analysis of push notification effectiveness and areas of improvement.
UX writing needs for final polish of designs and messaging prior to development, including prep for translations.
The results.
Both products delivered strong engagement and long-term value for MDRT’s global member base:
The MDRT Member App achieved active use in 148 countries with over 40,000 users, driving increased interaction with content, community features, and mentoring resources.
The Academy Platform maintained an active user rate 50% above global standards, achieved an 87% CSAT score, and expanded access across 4 languages.
Both products demonstrated improved member engagement through higher content interaction, stronger goal tracking participation, and sustained community growth.
Data integration and custom analytics supported ongoing feature optimization and informed decision-making across the organization.
Collaboration & leadership.
These long-term partnerships required close collaboration with MDRT’s leadership, internal product stakeholders, developers, and content teams. As both a team lead and hands-on contributor, I worked across disciplines to guide strategy, support product growth, and ensure the experiences reflected MDRT’s evolving vision.