About us
Poet & Scribe was founded in 2022 by Sandra Ibañez, senior quality specialist & product lead, and Jonathan Stephens, principal designer & product development director.
We work directly with your team, alongside agencies, or teaming with indie partners—depending on need.
What we do
We specialize in navigating the messy middle of purposeful strategy and practical delivery—whether you're: establishing foundations, scaling what's working, or untangling what isn't.
Practical Delivery
Evolving your design systems? Improving internal collaboration? Wanting accessible, resilient products? We've got your back.
We create all types of design systems that're comprehensive and clear, delivering compounding value to users & your bottom line.
Currently available for short-to-mid term projects (3–9mo).
Purposeful Strategy
We’ve worked in product development throughout our careers — from decades of scaling a global enterprise to consulting agencies, start-ups, and governments.
Each organization is unique, with their own rhythms of growth and scale. We focus on understanding your context and co-creating paths forward together.
If you’re looking for direction, scaling yourself, or have a team needs a change— we tailor talks & custom workshops to support you.
Can’t find what you need?
We’re happy to chat, even if the topic doesn't align exactly with what's listed above. We have breadth of skill & experience that can be put to use.
If we are unable to help,
Who we’ve worked with
We’ve built our careers working with digital product teams of diverse compositions & missions, including:
- Booking.com
- Strategi Consulting
- U.S. Space Force
- Trailmarks HQ
- Leantime.io
- Smashing Boxes
- N.C. State University
Our approach
Poet & Scribe is our name and how we work.
Poets take what’s hard to express and find language for it. They're sense-makers of meaning, giving form to abstract thoughts & feeling.
Scribes preserve knowledge, translating it into collective memory. They're context-builders, shaping how humans gather & scale beyond any one individual's contribution.
Design leadership, is much of the same: translating research into strategy, strategy into systems, and systems into practices — weaving alignment throughout.
We help teams build that capacity.
We work to understand where you’ve been, what you’ve learned, and what you’re actually trying to build. Then, we map potential paths to keep moving forward.
Guiding principles
If you want to work with disruptors, trend-setters, wand-wavers, rock-stars, or thing-breakers — that's not us.
These are more us ↓
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Coalitions over competition. Collective power through intentional collaboration instead of individual genius.
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Spectrums over binaries. Context and gradation instead of either/or thinking.
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Curiosity over assumptions. Asking questions and staying open, seeking suitable solutions instead of prescribing answers.
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Care over exploitation. Protecting well-being and sustainability instead of maximizing extraction.
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Transparency over obscurity. Making decisions and processes visible instead of keeping them hidden.
Let’s talk
If you’re interested in the support we offer, we’d love to chat
Email us at: