Strategist, SYPartners

June 2012—July 2013

SYPartners is a design consulting firm that works with leaders and their teams to set vision & strategy, build a culture of purpose and performance, and design brand experiences that engage customers. During my time as a strategist, I worked on two major clients and learned a great deal about the power of design as an approach to problem solving and how to apply principles of creativity and systems thinking to business.

AARP

During the first half of 2013, I participated in an engagement with the executive leadership team at AARP. I worked closely with this team to realign their enterprise strategy to grow social impact and transform their brand to be more relevant.

Product / Service Innovation 

Working closely with the CEO, Chief Brand Officer, I helped develop the strategy and methodology around Life Reimagined, a digital and in person service developed by AARP to help individuals realize new goals during life transition.

Commercial Strategy

In addition, we developed new product ideas and supporting revenue streams that could be realized from this platform. Through research and client collaboration, we created basic prototypes, sized the commercial opportunity, and crafted a go to market strategy. 

Enterprise Strategy

After forming insights about the way the world is changing in relation to AARP’s mission and our client’s goals, we worked closely with the leadership team to transform their overall enterprise strategy. We also brought together leaders to form new behaviors to follow in service of the enterprise strategy and ways to achieve overall organizational cohesion. 

AT&T

My first major engagement as a strategist with SYPartners was with AT&T. We worked closely with the SVP of Brand Marketing & Advertising and her team to improve customer experience and ultimately increase their Net Promoter Score. We also prototyped a variety of "omnichannel" marketing tactics.

Research / Insights

To show our client the forces that affect their future, my team and I conducted desk research and multiple interviews with key company stakeholders. We generated market trends and customer insights to help them better understand the unmet needs that their customers face and transform their organization to be more customer centric. Adhering to our user-centered approach, we also conducted ethnography in Seoul, South Korea to see what behaviors exist when mobile phone speed and reliability are concerns of the past. 

Prototyping

Through multiple working sessions that unearthed the personality of AT&T, we generated ideas of how AT&T can show up in the future. We then developed a vision video that told the story of how AT&T can connect the car of the future. We also prototyped new products and services that would create a more unified, personal, and simple customer experience. Throughout we collaborated with Interbrand and BBDO.