Your design thinking is excellent. How is your business thinking?
Great leaders set a vision worth chasing, build organizations that deliver, and understand what customers actually love. They were not trained to deal with the global upheaval brought on by AI.
No one was. That capability only comes with lived experience.
For the last 15 years I’ve led AI-first companies. Ranging from consumer to enterprise, including finance, manufacturing, and workflow automation. The only thing new about AI is this time is that it’s impacting everyone.
I am passionate about design and about using AI to make meaningful solutions to meaningful problems.
Leaders that inspire
Great leaders create a vision people want to be part of. They care about their customers. And they care about their people. Not as a performative tactic and not because it's the job, but because authenticity matters. They engage, they coach, they grow the people on their team. They learn from their customers. And they build cultures where honest feedback is normal and high performance is expected. Where being right means you have learned from your mistakes.
Teams that deliver
High-performing teams have a foundation of diversity. They're built from different disciplines, different backgrounds, different ways of thinking and different points of view on the problem. Give that group a real vision, a hard problem worth solving, and the autonomy to solve it, and they will build something great. This is the part of the job I find the most rewarding: watching a team hit its stride and take real ownership of the outcome.
Products people love
A great product solves a real problem. It's usable, it's desirable, and it delivers value, for the customer at the right moment. Get that right and the product stops being a tool people tolerate and becomes part of how they work or live. It grows because people want it, not because they're told to use it. That's the difference between a product people use and one they love.
Let’s work together to develop leaders who inspire, teams that deliver, and products people love.
Upstream by Design
The skills that make someone an exceptional designer are not the same skills that make someone a great leader. Especially when you are in a room where the conversation is about revenue targets, funding rounds, or the roles AI just made redundant.
Nobody in that room with budget authority knows why design matters if the design executive doesn’t make it matter.
That’s what I do.
Inspirational Leadership
AI is reordering every assumption about who creates value, and the org charts reflect those changes.
Is AI changing what's expected of you as a design leader faster than you can keep up?
Are you struggling to frame design's value in business terms your leadership actually responds to?
Do you find your organization leaning on AI tools without really understanding the problem?
I have turned my experience leading world-class design organizations and mentoring high-performing leaders into a formal coaching program. Inspirational Leadership is a structured six-module coaching program built specifically for design leaders. It covers the full range from emotional intelligence and transparency, to navigating risk and leading with purpose.
It will show you how to develop yourself and a team that can perform without you in the room.
Advising
Co-founding a half a dozen start-ups, and helped nine others achieve success. I have been fortunate to work with some of best industry leaders, Bill Gates, Hasso Plattner, and many more. Learn how I can can help you make your idea into a viable business.
Speaking
Learn how to increase your market share, improve customer satisfaction, and establish competitive advantages. My talks explore the full spectrum of design leadership and the transformative impact of GenAI, inspiring bold thinking and meaningful change.
Coaching
AI is reordering every assumption about who creates value in an organization. I will help you navigate the organizational dynamics, build the business acumen, and develop the leadership range to expand design's strategic influence before someone else defines design's value for you.