What does it take to increase economic freedom?
On Diana Simakhov’s team at cryptocurrency platform Coinbase, it involves building foundational platforms grounded in quality and trust.
The senior manager of product design said that Coinbase’s mission — to increase economic freedom — guides every decision her team makes. Recently, this approach empowered Simakhov’s team to unify core onboarding experiences into reusable, shared systems, which has had a significant impact.
“By prioritizing leverage over shortcuts, we can now ship consistent UX and efficiently optimize all onboarding flows, making it easier for people everywhere to access the crypto ecosystem,” she said.
Addition Wealth is equally motivated to make a difference in people’s lives, driven by its mission to make personalized financial expertise accessible and inclusive. According to Customer Success Manager Madeleine Butler, this mission is reflected in every business decision, including the company’s recent rollout of a new AI-powered retirement planning feature and debt management tools.
“As a result, we’ve seen higher engagement across the platform, better-informed financial decisions and more meaningful conversations in our personalized coaching sessions,” she said.
For the teams at Coinbase and Addition Wealth, noble missions empower people to drive impact — and believe in it. While Coinbase anchors every action in the key pillars of “trust, quality and leverage” to do this, Addition Wealth does so by sharing real employee success stories and case studies, ensuring that team members not only have the opportunity to change people’s lives but also see it for themselves.
Below, Simakhov and Butler share more about how Coinbase and Addition Wealth take a mission-driven approach to decision-making, how they measure this impact and how they make this influence tangible for employees.
Coinbase aims to make it easier for people to access and engage with crypto assets, offering a digital platform to buy, sell, and manage cryptocurrencies for individuals and businesses.
In one sentence, why does the mission matter to your team — and what decision did it guide recently? What was the impact of this decision?
Our team supports Coinbase’s mission of increasing economic freedom by building foundational platforms that provide leverage through quality and trust. This mission recently guided our decision to unify core onboarding experiences like authentication and know-your-customer verification into reusable, shared systems rather than building bespoke solutions.
“Our team supports Coinbase’s mission of increasing economic freedom by building foundational platforms that provide leverage through quality and trust.”
For example, after unifying authentication into a single account system, we resisted pressure to rebuild these flows natively for the Coinbase app. Instead, we kept our shared WebView architecture to preserve consistency while adding native polish like refined navigation, motion and haptics. We then applied this same model to build a unified KYC platform, enabling safe global expansion.
The impact has been significant. Our shared architecture improved usability and reduced drop-offs, while the unified KYC platform ensures Coinbase remains safe and compliant as we grow. By prioritizing leverage over shortcuts, we can now ship consistent UX and efficiently optimize all onboarding flows, making it easier for people everywhere to access the crypto ecosystem.
Which company initiative best demonstrates impact — and how do you measure it?
One of our most critical initiatives is the joint push between our risk and identity teams to protect customers from scams. We focus on three key areas: teaching users what to watch for, showing timely warnings (especially when sending assets off-platform), and providing simple protection tools. This gives the product design team a high-stakes mission: to continue to make Coinbase the most trusted platform. It challenges us to innovate on “healthy friction” by designing interventions that protect customers at critical moments without getting in the way.
We measure impact through a holistic mix of data and empathy. Quantitatively, we track reductions in scam-related support tickets, increased adoption of security features, fewer false alarms and faster shipping times for new protections. Qualitatively, we rely on direct customer research to understand their feelings, personal use cases and specific challenges. These combined insights allow us to rapidly refine our language, timing and design patterns to stay ahead of fast-evolving threats.
What ritual or behavior convinces people the mission is real?
We anchor everything to three words: trust, quality and leverage. These are critical to empowering all teams across Coinbase to drive economic freedom. They’re the lens for planning and prioritization, for negotiating resourcing on hard‑to‑measure quality work, and for weekly reviews. In planning, we ask if the work will increase customer trust, raise product quality, and create reusable patterns others can adopt. In critique, we hold designs to the same bar: Does it feel safe and clear (trust), is it usable and polished end to end (quality), and is it built on shared pieces so it scales across products (leverage)? Our status and post‑launch readouts tie back to these pillars, turning the mission from words into day‑to‑day behavior.
Organizations can offer Addition Wealth’s AI-powered financial wellness platform to their employees as a way to help them make informed financial decisions.
In one sentence, why does the mission matter to your team — and what decision did it guide recently? What was the impact of this decision?
At Addition Wealth, our mission is to make personalized financial expertise accessible and inclusive. We see firsthand how financial stress negatively impacts employees’ well-being, confidence and ability to thrive at work, and every day we are driven to help change that.
“We see firsthand how financial stress negatively impacts employees’ well-being, confidence and ability to thrive at work, and every day we are driven to help change that.”
Our mission guides everything that we do. One way individuals access the platform is through a self-service experience, and we recently rolled out more AI-powered retirement planning and debt management tools, ensuring employees can access high-quality, unbiased support whenever they need it. As a result, we’ve seen higher engagement across the platform, better-informed financial decisions and more meaningful conversations in our personalized coaching sessions.
Which company initiative best demonstrates impact — and how do you measure it?
We hear from employees about the impact we are having on a regular basis, and one very meaningful way is with our personalized financial coaching program, delivered through confidential one-on-one sessions with Addition Wealth financial professionals. We measure success through employee financial confidence scores and post-session surveys, coaching utilization rates and the completion of key financial milestones such as enrolling in a retirement plan, building an emergency fund or reducing debt. The sessions consistently show that, when employees have access to trusted guidance, they make more informed financial decisions that can directly improve their overall well-being.
What ritual or behavior convinces people the mission is real?
At Addition Wealth, we bring our mission to life by regularly sharing real employee success stories and case studies, tying our work back to real human impact. These stories highlight the financial progress individuals are making and reinforce, for both our team and our partners, that we’re not just building a product but delivering meaningful outcomes that are bettering people’s lives.
