Designer and Strategic Problem Solver

As a design strategist, I draw regularly upon a T-shaped background as an entrepreneur, a journalist and storyteller, an educator, an ethnographer, and a systems-thinking innovator with a keen eye for desirability, feasibility, and viability. I coach startups with the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and I teach design thinking for business in Executive MBA programs. I’m a human-centered design generalist as comfortable with working on products and services as I am talking Lean Startup and qualitative research techniques. I’ve worked across numerous industries, from tech, retail, and manufacturing to finance, media, hospitality, law, and the public sector. I work in tandem with stakeholders so that, on completion, client teams share both alignment and ownership of the results.

Case studies

 
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R Corp, Residential Developers
Melbourne, Australia

Co-led a strategic project with one of Melbourne, Australia’s biggest residential developers that initially aimed to create sales funnel efficiencies. Our work eventually uncovered insights that led to the creation of a vastly improved overseas investor/customer experience across multiple touchpoints, from marketing and selling to financing, renting and designing units for a planned 1,000-unit residential complex in South Melbourne.

 
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SONOS

Designed and led a three-month ethnographic research project for the redesign of in-store retail displays globally for wireless speaker company SONOS. Delivered two on-site workshops with the SONOS team at their HQ in Santa Barbara, CA, at the beginning and end of the project. Led the strategic prioritization of design opportunities, brainstormed potential solutions on the top choices, and prototyped and tested potential new retail display design elements.