Challenge

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed structural limitations in traditional laboratory training. Travel restrictions, workforce shortages, and global demand for rapid upskilling made in-person instruction difficult to scale.

CDC needed more than a temporary solution. It required a durable, globally accessible training model capable of delivering high-fidelity procedural education without geographic constraints—while maintaining scientific accuracy, usability, and long-term scalability.

This was not a course redesign. It was the creation of a new training infrastructure for a global workforce.

Product Strategy & Program Development

When organizational funding came through to unify CDC's laboratory learning ecosystem under OneLab, my team was given full autonomy to define what the immersive piece of that vision would become. There was no product brief, no prescribed approach — just a mandate to build something that aligned with OneLab's goals and a team capable of executing it.

I co-led concept development, product strategy, and roadmap ownership from the ground up — defining the platform vision, building the business case for immersive learning within the broader OneLab framework, and establishing the release cadence and lifecycle governance that would allow it to scale beyond its initial launch.

Team & Execution

I recruited, built, and led a multidisciplinary team spanning Unity developers, instructional designers, motion designers, and SMEs. We operated within an agile model, running weekly sprint cycles while aligning with broader enterprise project management standards.

More than 100 pieces of interactive laboratory equipment were developed with behavior-based realism, enabling high-fidelity procedural training. Multiplayer functionality was embedded at the architectural level, allowing geographically dispersed laboratorians to collaborate in real time.

I also designed the operating model and workflows required to sustain the platform, ensuring it could scale beyond its initial release and support ongoing content expansion.

Driving Adoption

Building the platform was only half the challenge. The laboratory workforce didn't have headsets, wasn't familiar with VR as a training modality, and was distributed across the country. Convincing them this was worth their time — and then actually getting them set up — required a change management effort as deliberate as the product work itself.

We shipped headsets to labs across the country and traveled on-site to configure devices, connect networks, and answer questions in person. We ran standing office hours — calls with labs nationwide where I'd ask directly: what are you seeing, what isn't working, what do we need to fix? IT staff joined in real time and we troubleshot together.

What we needed at each site was an ambassador — someone local who would take ownership, get it off the ground, and sustain it. We couldn't be everywhere. So we built a model that didn't require us to be. Once a site was connected and had a champion, it could run. That model is what allowed a platform built by a small team to reach a globally distributed workforce.

Impact

OneLabVR launched as a persistent, globally accessible immersive training platform for the laboratory workforce, establishing a scalable model for delivering procedural education without geographic constraints.

The platform shifted immersive learning from a pilot initiative to a sustained, enterprise-supported program, enabling continuous training, collaboration, and capability expansion across the global laboratory community.

My Role

As Associate Creative Director, I co-founded the immersive learning program, co-owned product strategy, led design direction, and built the team and operating model required to deliver and scale the platform.

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