Experience
Beacon Advisory, Brooklyn, NY
Managing Director
July 2023 — present
Leading a boutique management consultancy enabling clients’ growth and transformation initiatives. Areas of focus include experience strategy & design, operational excellence, and organizational development supporting customer-led growth and innovation. Clients are a mix of private equity firms and established companies either confronting a new challenge or seeking renewal and growth. More info at www.beaconadvisory.co
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McKinsey & COMPANY, New York, NY
Global Leader, Customer Experience
2022 — April 2023
At McKinsey & Company, my last remit was to create a tech-enabled organization that is continually informed by the voices of its’ customers and innovating in response to their needs. I led global change initiatives to create capabilities which embed best practices for the design and management of customer experience into the operating model. This role required partnering with leaders of business functions to reimagine core experiences for clients and employees of the Firm and to deliver business impact by driving the adoption of new capabilities and ways of working.
I built and led a customer experience team made up of insights & analytics, design, customer success, and change management functions. This group created CX strategies that drove key business outcomes, such as adoption of products & services, cost savings, and improvements to the company’s culture. And we quickly stood up cross-functional teams throughout the business to execute and iterate on initiatives to deliver on customer needs and to build institutional infrastructure enabling higher performance at scale including data, tooling, analytics and up-skilling of talent.
Increased customer satisfaction by 25%, customer engagement by 15%, and operational efficiency by 35% by identifying opportunities to improve CX and creating more seamless customer journeys associated with core experiences
Made digital self-service the #1 choice for customers to get support, reducing by 60% the volume in higher-cost channels. Achieved these results by empowering employees, engaging customers, optimizing operations, and leveraging enabling technologies and practices such as AI, ML, RPA, ITSM to streamline customer experience
Generated novel insights to inform journey redesign, continuous improvement actions, and strategic resource allocation by developing a CX measurement and performance management system, enhancing ‘voice of the customer’ programs, and establishing a unified source of customer and operational data
Cultivated customer-centricity by creating a change program to energize the broader organization around the importance of being customer-led as well as a maturity model, diagnostic, and capability-building program to upskill teams regarding CX management
Gobal Head of Digital Innovation
2014 — 2022
As part of the leadership team for the Technology function, I was responsible for driving digital transformation of internal business functions and evolving the way professional services are delivered by a market leader in management consulting. In this role I built and led the capabilities for Design, Research, Analytics, and Data Science across a global footprint, integrating this talent into cross-functional teams supporting product development, service delivery, and business operations.
This included envisioning, defining and aligning other business functions and stakeholders on what a human-centered and data-driven approach to product development looked like for the enterprise and what that meant for practitioners in each of these crafts. And then defining the organizational structures, processes, tools and work environment aligned with that approach to support and manage the delivery of day-to-day work so that individual contributors could stay motivated, grow professionally, and do the best work of their careers.
As a result:
Customer satisfaction scores for products and services delivered by the Tech function increased from an average of 4.1 to 4.8/5 after adoption of human-centered and data-driven methods
Technology function slashed the time required for initial design and stakeholder alignment by 75%, resulting in cost savings of $125K per minor project and $875K per major project
Product teams leveraged better customer insight to reduce development and testing time by 33%, resulting in cost savings of $230K per minor project and $1.1M per major project
Functional capabilities I led (120+ people) achieved highest diversity, employee satisfaction, and retention rates for 6 consecutive years amongst peer groups within the Firm
I was also responsible for developing the organization’s approach to innovation management, leading a portfolio of investment, programs and partnerships nurturing 'bottom-up' innovation and enabling cross-functional teams to rapidly test high-potential opportunities and scale those with demonstrated potential for impact. A key area of focus was the incubation of innovative applications of AI and machine learning that improve customer experiences, enable faster and better decision-making, and optimize business processes. This portfolio of work produced more than $18M/year in OpEx savings by:
Streamlining self-service processes and access to institutional knowledge with conversational AI;
Personalizing experiences to aid discovery and boost productivity (a recommender system created by the team I sponsored increased user engagement by 40% and won MIT’s “Analytics Capstone” award in 2022);
Automating data extraction and analysis;
Helping employees get better answers faster from siloed and unstructured data across the organization with intelligent search powered by machine learning and generative AI.
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frog, New York, NY
Executive Creative Director
2012 — 2013
At frog I was part of the leadership team for the New York Studio, partnering with the C-suite and executive teams at a diverse portfolio of Fortune 500 clients to create new institutional capabilities and digital businesses that enabled those organizations to enter new markets and better serve customers. For each client engagement, I led multi-disciplinary teams to deliver growth strategy, innovation strategy, brand strategy, experience design, and service design. In this role, I also developed and closed new business relationships.
Sample engagements:
Worked with a leading luxury retailer to reimagine their loyalty program in order to meaningfully differentiate their proposition for critical customer segments and drive additional revenue, resulting in a 15% increase in customer retention and a 10% increase in average order value
Incubated a new business venture based on prognostic analysis of sensor data from industrial assets to deliver innovative services optimizing operational performance and energy efficiency, generating $25M in revenue within the first year
Created a new paradigm in wealth management and advisory services, launching a ‘zero to one’ company to seed a culture of investing in one of the world’s fastest growing and most underserved economies. Captured 14% share within first year.
Helped a multinational investment banking firm establish a modern software development capability, including a responsive design language system encompassing UI patterns, guidelines and a supporting component library. Resulted in a 30% increase in delivery velocity and a 20% decrease in defect rate.
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r/GA, New York, NY
VP, Group Director, Product Innovation
2010 — 2012
In this role, I created and led a new service line focused on finding new growth, creating new offerings, and empowering innovation for the world’s leading brands. Working with clients including Barnes & Noble, Hearst, HBO, HP, Johnson & Johnson, Mastercard, Nike, Pfizer, and PwC, I led engagement teams through research, ideation and design to identify emerging market opportunities, generate concepts for new customer experiences and business ecosystems, and incubate those offerings from seed to scale. Areas of responsibility included developing this new service offering, establishing the team, leading new business pitches, and orchestrating client engagements.
Executive Creative Director, Experience Strategy
2008 — 2010
Provided leadership for multi-disciplinary teams creating compelling products, services and brand experiences for clients including Nike, Nokia and Verizon.
Recruited and mentored a cohort of design strategists focused on solving complex business problems through the planning and design of integrated, multi-channel brand experiences that enhance customer engagement and business value.
Identified new business opportunities and led new business pitches and presentations.
Related positions held: Creative Director, Associate Creative Director
Interaction Design Director
2003 — 2006
Provided user-centered, systematic design insight and direction to a team of interaction designers creating award winning digital applications (web, mobile, OOH and desktop) for global Fortune 500 companies.
Led the development and delivery of business requirements, audience and competitive analyses, creative briefs, content inventories, information architecture strategies and other project documentation.
Ensured that work met best practices for user experience and identified opportunities for the evolution of clients’ standards governing brand management.
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THE JAMES IRVINE FOUNDATION, San Francisco, CA
Manager, Online Initiatives
2000-2002
Developed, managed and marketed web-based products, applications and services to facilitate the social missions of nonprofit and philanthropic organizations.
Served as lead product manager for all online initiatives; building and leading diverse, inter-departmental teams; crafting strategies, budgets, and methodology; establishing priorities, work plans, and assignments.
Collaborated with IT staff and independent contractors to model business processes, define technical specifications and architect applications that consistently met objectives, streamlined operations and improved efficiency.
Monitored and analyzed performance measures, using data to deliver actionable insight and drive business decisions.
Chief of Staff to the Executive Office
1998-2000
Managed the offices of the President/CEO and Vice President/Corporate Secretary, supporting their oversight of grantmaking, planning, communications and administrative activity at the Foundation.
Acted as primary liaison with Board of Directors.
Supported the Foundation’s communications efforts, including development of strategy and annual operating plan as well as production of vehicles such as annual reports, press releases, research publications, and corporate website.
Strengths
Ability to examine problems from different perspectives, rethink solutions from the ground up and have a healthy disregard for the impossible
Ability to influence without authority, building trust-based relationships with a diverse set of stakeholders to build shared understanding of an issue and develop a path forward
Ability to bring out the best in others by giving them new responsibilities and challenging them to do more than they currently do or thought possible
SKILLS
Applied AI
Behavioral design
Customer experience
Customer insight
Customer success
Customer support
Design research
Design strategy
Design systems
Design thinking
Digital strategy
Digital transformation
Innovation management
Interaction design
Interface design
Org and culture design
Measurement & analytics
Product design
Product development
Product management
Product strategy
Public speaking
Service design
Systems thinking
Team leadership
Voice of the customer
Workshop facilitation
INDUSTRIES
Consumer products and services
Financial services
Healthcare & pharmaceutical
Media & entertainment
Nonprofit & philanthropy
Professional services
Retail & e-commerce
Technology & communications
TEACHING & SPEAKING
CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY, SCHOOL OF DESIGN
FAST COMPANY, INNOVATION BY DESIGN
FORRESTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE COUNCIL
GOLDMAN SACHS SPARK SPEAKER SERIES
MCKINSEY & COMPANY, VALUES DAY
MCKINSEY & COMPANY, PRODUCT LEADERSHIP FORUM
MCKINSEY & COMPANY, PRODUCT UNIVERSITY
NIKE GLOBAL SALES ANNUAL SUMMIT
NIKE GLOBAL COMMERCE ANNUAL SUMMIT
SXSW
WORLD USABILITY DAY
EDUCATION
OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE, LOS ANGELES, CA
Majors: Public Policy, Environmental Science
Minor: Economics
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, CA
Walter A. Haas School of Business, Executive MBA program
School for Continuing & Professional Education
- Project Management Certification
- Web Design and Development