Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management

Middlebury College

University of Oxford

New Trier

Strategy, Brand, and Experience Design at Gensler

Bainbridge Island, Washington, United States

Creating meaningful, beautiful, and valuable experiences through the integration of strategy, brand, design, and the built environment. Thrilled to be helping further Gensler's mission of "creating a better world though the power of design."

Gensler

Innovation + Strategy Director

Led/built a team whose focus was to get closer to consumers and drive product and marketing; deepen our human-centered approach to the experience of buying, selling, and renting homes; and develop and scale new methods/culture (design thinking + agile) around how Zillow itself collaborates across Marketing, Design, Product, and Strategy to drive new value creation.

Highlights of the [all-remote] time period include:

-  co-led the cross-functional creation of Zillow's future customer experience vision for our target persona; pivoted, transitioned, and redesigned all immersion and intense workshopping to be fully digital as COVID hit

-  brought disparate research groups into a productive collaboration, ultimately consolidating all groups' knowledge (insights, UX research, behavioral science, competitive intel) onto one globally-accessible knowledge mgmt platform and summits

-  increased clarity of our storytelling throughout customer research, integrating ethnographic videos and qual/quant data of customer, competitive, and context information

-  broadened research into more nimble methods, using new external partners and ensuring that research was leveraged internally with relevant teams

-  launched new customer personas that drove re-alignment across the company and annual planning

-  initiated CX measurement program with cross-functional team and external partners

-  drove research to be more actionable via collaborative design workshops that drove deeper understanding and created potential concepts and prioritization for Marketing and Product roadmaps

Zillow

Vice President  -  Insights + Innovation

Led Fjord's presence in our Products portfolio for North America, with specific focus on strategic accounts within the Retail, Consumer Goods + Services, and Automotives sectors.

This means I 1) developed our points of view on the future of those sectors, 2) drove our methods, partnerships, and new technologies to help realize those futures, and 3) landed new work and led delivery for fantastic clients around the U.S.

Fjord

National Director  -  Design + Innovation  -  Products Group

Led Fjord’s west coast team of Business Designers in driving human-centered strategy. The team created disruptive new value and meaning for our clients, in industries like healthcare, retail, automotives, telecom, and government...transforming our clients' cultures and portfolios along the way. Ethnographic research, customer journeys, experience design, brand touchpoints, service blueprinting, and "making to think" are all part of our work and how we design new futures for our clients.

Helped shape a strong regional team that collaborated -- across disciplines, the LA/SF/Seattle studios, and our global Accenture colleagues -- in delivering innovation at scale.

Regional Director  -  Business Design + Strategy

Founded and led the new Seattle studio for global innovation-consultancy Fjord, serving as GM. Responsible for P&L, hiring the team of designers/ researchers/ technologists/ strategists/ program managers, and providing leadership around creative direction, service design, portfolio design, business development, account strategy, and culture development.

Integrated the threads of my diverse experiences into a cohesive whole, leading and supporting the collective brilliance of talented designers, researchers, strategists, and technologists in creating amazing client and customer experiences.

Fjord is a design and innovation consultancy. We create useful, effective, and desirable digital services that people love. We help the world’s leading businesses make complex systems simple and elegant with the power of design. Founded in 2001 and acquired by Accenture Interactive in 2013, Fjord employs a diverse group of over 1,000 design experts in twenty-four global creative studios.

Founder and Group Director [General Manager] of Seattle studio

Collaborated with the world’s most innovative organizations to drive new growth in award-winning products and services by harnessing and integrating ethnographic research, brand and business strategy, business model development, go-to-market strategies, organizational change, and design (experience/industrial/interactive/visual). Our work spanned things like customer journey mapping, customer experience definition, service blueprinting, and brand strategy. Clients included the Federal Reserve, Target, Honda, Oracle, Brooks Running, Penske, The Space Needle, Microsoft, and many others.

frog is a global innovation + design firm. We identify business opportunities and design meaningful products, services, and experiences that grow brands and delight customers.

frog

Executive Director  -  Innovation Strategy

Co-founded and served as the global lead of frogLabs™, a platform to provoke and inspire the world with bold new ideas. Independent from client engagement, frogLabs work is a catalyst for debate, provocation, and disruption.

I was responsible for working across frog's global studios to identify and nurture promising ideas, to run the global competition for ideas, to provide structure and direction to the teams, and to ensure development of concepts that can be shared with partners and media.  Projects included space tourism, ferry innovation, interactive learning toys, and others.

Co-founder and Executive Director  -  frogLabs

Innovated frog methods, designed our portfolio of work with frogs' passions and goals as the framework, managed pipeline, landed new clients, structured innovation programs, facilitated workshops, spoke/taught innovation and design thinking, delivered quality client service, and fostered frog's brand and design research capabilities.

Led by influence, drove value through collaboration. Deeply involved in our consulting work, but met or exceeded aggressive financial targets every year. (Hired as Director, promoted in 2012.)

Executive Director  -  Business Development

Drove the firm's pipeline and doubled revenues, structuring our offering/pitches/proposals/methods to meet the needs of both new clients and the evolving market. Led teams in developing thought capital and related artifacts in sustainability, mobile apps, healthcare, and retail industries.

Built strategic relationships with firms, academics, and thought leaders; expanded client base to include companies such as Samsung, McDonald's, S.C. Johnson, Cricket Communications, Johnson Controls, Energizer, and others. Actively expanded the firm's intellectual property into new industries and developed our knowledge of possible areas to apply innovation principles.

Led the creation and management of the firm's brand strategy, focusing on building gravitytank's brand scale and equity in the industry. Managed the firm's marketing and PR, including relationships w journalists, speaking organizations, and awards competitions.

Actively spoke at industry conferences and frequent guest lecturer at Kellogg in product development, innovation, and ethnographic research.

gravitytank

Associate Partner  -  CMO + Head of Business Development

Led strategy/creative work for ground-breaking teams of researchers, strategists, and designers on client engagements with Fortune 500 companies. Integrated business and brand strategy with industrial, interactive, and communications design to deliver unique products that meet consumer needs in new ways.

Led the firm's largest programs at the time, and brought brand strategy to gravitytank as a formal discipline. Designed and managed the external marketing of the firm.

Team Lead  -  Product + Service Design

Designed clients' brand strategies and architectures, focusing on the intersection with corporate strategy.  Experience includes work on corporate messaging, brand architecture, naming systems and toolkits, internal brand adoption methods.

Prophet Brand Strategy

Brand Strategist  -  Senior Associate

Led creation of strategic options for mergers, acquisitions, expansions, and divestitures based on analyses of clients' competitive environment, internal capabilities, brand, and market position.

Inforte Corp.

Strategy Manager

Designed org structures and managed projects dealing with organizational strategy (e.g., restructuring). Served as liaison for Midwest-focused marketing programs.

The Hay Group (now Korn Ferry)

Manager  -  Organization Design

Created first mobile strategy for Tribune Interactive (TI).  Evaluated current Internet offerings of TI for transition to wireless space and recommended strategic, organizational imperatives for entering new areas.

Led and structured negotiation between mobile content provider, Vindigo, and TI for Chicago, L.A., and Miami markets; relationship was cash-positive within one year.  Wireless platform offered new medium to existing advertisers.

Evaluated potential alliances to determine business model viability and strategic fit with TI.

Tribune Interactive

Summer Associate  -  Business Development

- Now Accenture.) Managed/contributed to org design and strategy, process design, and M&A integration projects across industries. Clients included: AT&T, CellularOne, JP Morgan, John Hancock, BOC Gases, BASF, Pepsi.

Teaque Lenahan